Who is Hosting Saturday Night Live Tonight: February 13, 2021

at
Share This Post

SNL is live tonight with a new episode of Saturday Night Live hosted by Oscar winner turned director Regina King!

For those that are counting, this evening’s new Saturday Night Live show is the 12th episode of SNL‘s 46th year and it’s the 7th episode this season with a first-time host. Executive Producer Lorne Michaels has picked some of show biz’s best to emcee this year and take good care of his late night baby, with hosts including Bill Burr, Adele, Issa Rae, John Krasinski, Timothée Chalamet and Dan Levy. Tonight should be no exception with host Regina King.

However, before we get to this evening’s new SNL host, there’s some Saturday Night Live news to discuss. This Tuesday, February 16th will be the premiere of the new NBC sitcom “Kenan” starring long-time SNL cast member Kenan Thompson. This new TV series joins the pantheon of television shows where the series is named after its star. From “I Love Lucy” to “Seinfeld” to “That’s So Raven“, now “Kenan” joins the ranks of those greats.

In this new series, Kenan Thompson is not playing a spoof of himself. The sitcom version of “Kenan” is a local TV morning show host in Atlanta, Georgia. He is raising two daughters by himself after the loss of his wife. Kenan may be a single parent, but he’s not alone. Helping out the sitcom dad is his father-in-law played by Don Johnson and Kenan’s brother played by current SNL cast mate Chris Redd.

One thing people are probably wondering about is, does this mean that Kenan Thompson is leaving Saturday Night Live!? After all, Kenan is the longest tenured SNL cast member with 17 seasons under his belt. The next closest SNL cast member in longevity is Darrell Hammond who had 14 seasons as a member of the SNL cast. So, after almost two decades who could blame Kenan Thompson for wanting to leave SNL for different opportunities.

The good news, especially for us Kenan Thompson fans, is that he is sticking with the Emmy award winning variety series. And so is his “Kenan” co-star Chris Redd. They will both be pulling double-duty as part of both SNL and “Kenan.” This doesn’t mean though that Kenan Thompson will be part of Saturday Night Live for all eternity.

Kenan told Variety.com that he has an idea of how many SNL seasons he’s like to do before he calls it quits one day. He told the mag, “I have a certain number I would love to get to. I think 20 is a good, round, even number that I’m close to. I feel like that is in reach, but also it would be respected if I don’t get there. Like, 18 is fine, 19 is fine. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is, will I have time for my family? There’s only 24 hours in a day.”

As for Kenan’s boss, Lorne Michaels, who’s an executive producer on “Kenan” as well as SNL, he’s thrilled to have Kenan Thompson do both projects. He said, “The industry finally came around to my way of thinking, which is, why does a series have to be 24 episodes, and why do you have to leave ‘SNL’ for it?” Lorne Michaels respects Kenan Thompson’s plan to reach 20 seasons. After all, as Lorne mentioned to Variety, he’s getting close to 50 seasons with SNL himself.

Now back to tonight’s show and its host Regina King. Let’s get to her credentials. Oscar winner? Check. Regina King won the Academy Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance in 2018’s “If Beale Street Could Talk.” That’s a performance that also earned Regina the Golden Globe in the same category that year.

Primetime Emmy Awards? Check again. Regina King has 4 of those beautiful trophies. She won in 2020 for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for playing Sister Night in HBO’s “The Watchmen.” She also won in that category for 2018’s crime drama “Seven Seconds” and for the 2016 and 2015 seasons of the anthology TV series “American Crime.”

Regina King’s TV career includes plenty of comedy including roles on “The Big Bang Theory“, “The Boondocks“, “Shameless” and the sitcom where she got her start as a child star, “227” which starred Marla Gibbs and Jackée Harry.

Her filmography is a great mix of comedy and drama with plenty of stand-out films including “Friday” (1995), “Jerry Maguire” (1996), “Boyz n the Hood” (1991), “Poetic Justice” (1993), “Legally Blonde 2” (2003), “Ray” (2004), and “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” (1998).

Tonight, Regina King is hosting Saturday Night Live to promote her directorial debut as a film director, “One Night in Miami.” And of course, just like Regina King always does, she’s been nominated for her work. She’s picked up a nomination for Best Director of a Motion Picture for “One Night in Miami” at the 78th Annual Golden Globe Awards coming up on Sunday, February 28th.

“One Night in Miami” takes place in February of 1964 and it’s about the fictional meeting of four very real-life heroes. The public figures featured in the film include minister and activist Malcolm X, football legend Jim Brown, singer / songwriter Sam Cooke and Muhammad Ali, the greatest boxer of all-time.

They meet together in a Miami hotel to celebrate Ali taking another step towards his greatness. It’s the night when Ali won the world championship from Sonny Liston. The night of the fight, Muhammad Ali hadn’t changed his name yet and he was still known by his birth name Cassius Clay. The movie is the perfect set up for a parody sketch on SNL tonight. The sketch could be the sequel to “One Night in Miami” where four much, much less influential black public figures gather for a fictional meeting.

Imagine the movie taking place at a time when where we’re really running out of influential black luminaries and it ends up being a meeting of Carlton from “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air“, Wayne Brady from “Let’s Make a Deal“, Michael Winslow from “Police Academy” and Erkel from “Family Matters” all discussing their life decisions.

The SNL Cold Open is usually political in nature and fortunately for the Saturday Night Live writers’ room, Donald Trump is still in the headlines without even being in office. Donald Trump’s impeachment sequel is underway in the Capitol and Senators are getting to see never-before-seen footage of the siege that was waged on them by Trump supporters. That should be plenty for the SNL Cold Open and Weekend Update writers to work with.

Other major news items that SNL might use tonight on Weekend Update or for sketches or SNL Shorts include a hacker trying to poison a Florida town’s water supply, a Louisiana woman needing plastic surgery to remove the Gorilla Glue she applied to her scalp in place of hair spray and Shaq’s Krispy Kreme donut shop in Atlanta burning down. And it’s Valentine’s Day weekend, so we can expect plenty of sketches about love and romance tonight on SNL.

Another news item that SNL has covered in the past has an update with the “Aunt Jemima” name and likeness being taken off of pancake products and replaced with the name “Pearl Milling Company.” If SNL is considering replaying the sketch about cancel culture from a show last November featuring host Dave Chappelle and guest star Maya Rudolph as Aunt Jemima, please feel free to do so. It’s a classic.

There’s one big show biz story this week that Saturday Night Live will more than likely cover in one way or another and that’s Bruce Springsteen being arrested by Jersey park rangers back in November for a DWI after being caught drinking at the Gateway National Recreation Area by the National Park Service. It’s a chance for SNL to bring back its “Thirsty Cops” sketch which features cast member Ego Nwodim. With host Regina King on hand, she could take former cast member Leslie Jones’ place in the sketch. This would also be a great spot on SNL for new featured cast member Punkie Johnson.

Other entertainment stories that could make their way on to Saturday Night Live tonight include “The Mandalorian” co-star Gina Carano being fired for comparing cancel culture to the Holocaust, along with Kevin Hart’s personal shopper allegedly using the comedian’s credit card to spend a $1 million on himself, the Oscars planning on having a live ceremony this April, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees being announced and former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway’s daughter appearing on the upcoming season of “American Idol.” SNL cast member Kate McKinnon does too good of a Kellyanne Conway impression to throw it away now just because her boss, Donald Trump, turned out to be a one-termer.

And from the world of sports, the big story for Saturday Night Live this week is the Tampa Bay Buccaneers winning Super Bowl LV by clobbering the listless Kansas City Chiefs 31 to 9. Other stories regarding the Super Bowl that might make it onto Weekend Update this evening are Tom Brady passing the Lombardi Trophy from boat to boat over the water during the Bucs’ Super Bowl victory boat parade, CBS Sports commentator Tony Romo and his infamous Super Bowl piss spot on his slacks, and speaking of piss, there’s the piss-poor job the Super Bowl LV streaker did by running on the field wearing clothes.

Time to talk promos. SNL put out two promo videos for this week’s brand new show. We have them below to watch in their entirety. The first one is a quick 15 second promo announcing Regina King as host along with musical guest, folk, rhythm and blues artist, Nathaniel Rateliff. It’s got a quick montage of clips from the past 2 weeks of live shows to get everyone up to speed.

In the second set of promos for tonight’s Saturday Night Live episode, host Regina King is joined by musical guest Nathaniel Rateliff and SNL cast member Beck Bennett. The trio attempt to come up with the best things about New York City in February. They’re kind of lost after coming up with 4:30pm sunsets. Also, it appears that St. Valentine’s Day isn’t going to be a joyful holiday in the Bennett household this year.

Academy Award winning actor and Golden Globe nominated director Regina King hosts an all-new Saturday Night Live tonight with musical guest Nathaniel Rateliff. It begins this evening at 11:30pm et and live coast-to-coast across all American time zones on NBC!

Read more comedy news.

Ernie Tripper

Ernie Tripper