Who is Hosting Saturday Night Live Tonight: March 3, 2018

The Winter Olympics are over and Saturday Night Live is back tonight, live across all time zones, with host Charles Barkley!

All through February, NBC pre-empted SNL with coverage of the Olympic Games, and tonight at 11:30pm the Emmy Award winning variety series makes the network’s transition from sports back to comedy by bringing back one of the series’ favorite athletes to ever host, the Round Mound of Rebound, Charles Barkley. This will be the fourth time hosting for the 2-time NBA Hall of Famer. Barkley has hosted SNL in 1993, 2010 and 2012.

Here’s a little perspective on Charles Barkley’s history with Saturday Night Live. When Barkley first hosted the show, back in Season 19, SNL cast members included Phil Hartman, Mike Myers, Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, David Spade and Kevin Nealon anchoring Weekend Update. That particular show which aired Saturday, September 25, 1993, included a sketch which became an SNL classic featuring Charles Barkley and fellow NBA player Muggsy Bogues appearing on a segment of “Daily Affirmation with Stuart Smalley” played by Al Franken. Barkley losing it and cracking up during the sketch became Monday morning water cooler fodder.

Tonight’s SNL with Charles Barkley returning to host is the perfect opportunity for Kenan Thompson to break out his impression of basketball pariah LaVar Ball. Of course, Thompson has been known to also impersonate Barkley as well. And if SNL does decide to parody Charles Barkley’s current gig as co-host of Inside the NBA, someone is going to have to step in to play Shaquille O’Neal, a job once hilariously handled by former cast member Jay Pharoah.

Also, watch for Alec Baldwin to return as President Trump tonight. The two had a Twitter battle late this week with Trump practically calling out and daring Baldwin to do his impression again. Baldwin tweeted back a response which buried the President who for some unknown reason reignited the social media feud with the Emmy Award winner. You can see all the tweets below, which include Baldwin saying “we’ve got Charles Barkley this Saturday!”. So, it sounds like Baldwin is set to put on the orange wig for tonight’s cold open. Other things to watch for which may make the jump from the headlines to the SNL writers’ room include the Oscars happening this weekend and how the awards show will handled the women’s #MeToo movement, also major companies bailing on the NRA and there may be a digital short music video to go along with the release of a parody song earlier this week from cast members Pete Davidson and Chris Redd who turned Drake’s song “God’s Plan” into “Don’s Plan” mocking out the President.

In the promos for tonight’s long awaited Saturday Night Live return, the show released a couple of training video promos featuring Charles Barkley admitting that he’s not a comedian along with a whistle-blowing Aidy Bryant trying to whip Charles into hosting shape and in the next promo, Barkley is joined by musical guests Migos and Kate McKinnon where the host finds himself in an embarrassing situation of trying to fit in.

Tonight, Saturday Night Live returns live across all American time zones with now four-time host Sir Charles Barkley and musical guests Migos at 11:30pm on NBC.

Here’s President Trump’s tweet picking yet another fight with Alec Baldwin and the actor’s responses which even brought the First Lady into it the spat.

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