Who is Hosting Saturday Night Live Tonight: September 14, 2019

With just two weeks left before the SNL Season Premiere, tonight’s Saturday Night Live repeat is hosted by John Mulaney!

We’re all excited for the season premiere of Saturday Night Live coming up on September 28th and to see what the new season brings. The departure of Leslie Jones from SNL led the casting news over the summer hiatus. That is until this week’s announcement of Saturday Night Live adding three new featured players to the cast just in time for the new season. These three new arrivals, Shane Gillis, Byron Bowers and Chloe Fineman, are more than likely going through an SNL crash course as we speak.

As for upcoming hosts, Woody Harrelson hosts the SNL – Season 45 premiere on September 28th. He begins a run of Season 45 hosts that include Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Oct. 5th), David Harbour (Oct. 12th) and Kristen Stewart (Nov. 2nd). However the host that everyone is talking about is Eddie Murphy and his Saturday Night Live homecoming for the SNL Christmas show, which is always one of the best of the year already, on Saturday, December 21st.

The host of tonight’s SNL repeat airing at 11:30pm et on NBC, is quickly gaining in Saturday Night Live popularity himself in addition to his huge stand up following. John Mulaney originally hosted this evening’s encore episode on March 2, 2019. It was Mulaney’s second time hosting Saturday Night Live within a year’s time. A very rare thing for an SNL host.

The quick turnaround on John Mulaney’s SNL hosting gigs allowed him to do something even more rare on Saturday Night Live, and that’s to add a second act to a sketch he wrote. When John Mulaney hosted the show in 2018 during SNL – Season 43, he persuaded EP Lorne Michaels into putting together a big budget sketch that Mulaney originally wrote during his six seasons as a writer for SNL beginning in 2008, but could never get on the air.

Titled “Lobster Diner“, the sketch featured cast member Pete Davidson as a customer in a New York City diner who makes the culinary faux pas of ordering the lobster special in a landlocked diner. The sketch turns into an over-the-top spoof spectacle of the Broadway smash, “Les Misérables”. During his 2019 hosting gig which airs tonight, Mulaney adds a chapter to the saga by having Pete Davidson once again do something every New Yorker knows never to do; ask to use the bathroom in an NYC bodega. The elaborate costumes and larger-than-life musical numbers along with Broadway effects are back again for the sequel to the “Lobster Diner” sketch you see tonight titled “Bodega Bathroom“ which features parody songs from “Rent“, “Cats“, “Willy Wonka” and “Little Shop of Horrors.” We really hope that Mulaney gets to host for a third time this coming season, so he can add the third act and complete his SNL musical comedy opus.

Tonight’s SNL repeat is also one of the best because of its cameos. The celebrity guest appearances start in the SNL – Cold Open which recreates Trump personal lawyer turned convict Michael Cohen’s testimony in front of Congress. It’s a who’s who of political impressions as the SNL cast impersonates current members of Congress with Ben Stiller returning to Saturday Night Live as Michael Cohen. It’s great watching Stiller turn this character who was always the butt of Saturday Night Live‘s jokes into a straight-man who turns the House of Representatives into circus clowns. Stealing the scene from Stiller in the opening sketch is returning SNL cast member and Emmy Award winner Bill Hader whose ridiculously angry take on Ohio Republican Congressman Jim Jordan is pure perfection.

You’ll also see Bill Hader tonight in the opening sketch called “What’s That Name?”. The game show sketch features host John Mulaney and cast member Cecily Strong competing against each other as contestants on a game show who are forced to guess the names of people who they really should know by a sadistic game show host played by Hader.

Other sketches you’ll see in this evening’s SNL rerun include “Shark Tank: Legal Edition” which is a spoof of the popular reality show. In the SNL sketch version, famous legal sharks played by John Mulaney and the SNL cast which includes Mulaney as legal whiz Alan Dershowitz and cast member Kate McKinnon reprising her Rudy Giuliani, hear pleas from celebrity defendants (cast members Beck Bennett as Pats owner Robert Kraft and Chris Redd as Jussie Smollett) looking for counsel.

Mulaney also plays a wedding plus-one guest who’s worried he won’t fit in with his girlfriend’s family and friends at a wedding reception. And you’ll see tonight’s host as Humphrey Bogart opposite of Kate McKinnon’s Lauren Bacall in a “PBS Cinema Classics” sketch hosted by cast member Kenan Thompson’s recurring character, Reese De’What!!

Of course, John Mulaney’s primary talent is as a stand up comedian which is on full display in this evening’s repeat’s SNL monologue segment. Mulaney’s monologue, which is done with microphone-in-hand stand up style, focuses on his what’s it’s like to be John Mulaney; to be riding high one moment and have the wind knocked out of your sails the very next. Mulaney also touches on his inter-faith marriage, his pet French Bulldog Petunia, his wife running into Woody Allen with Soon Yi Previn, the NYC subway system and police sirens. It’s a John Mulaney comedy special condensed into 7 minutes.

One of the SNL – Digital Shorts you’ll see tonight has been waiting to see the light of day for quite awhile. It’s been incubating for 10 years. John Mulaney wrote the concept for “Toilet Death Ejector” ten years ago in 2009. It was another of Mulaney’s sketches rejected during his days in the SNL writers’ room. A decade later, you’ll see the latest in dignified elderly toilet equipment in the form of an SNL – Digital Short tonight.

The other short in tonight’s repeat is “Chad Horror Movie“. It features Pete Davdison as his nonchalant recurring character Chad, known for his monosyllabic response “O-kuh”. In the short, Chad finds himself in the middle of a “Scream“-style horror film facing down his lethal stalker played by John Mulaney.

Weekend Update’s main focus this week is the same as the SNL – Cold Open, Trump lawyer Michael Cohen facing a congressional drilling as he testified against the President on Capitol Hill. SNL anchorman Michael Che has some choice words for Cohen on this edition of Update. He takes exception with Cohen “actin’ like a bitch” now that he’s facing prison time. Che even ends up defending Trump tonight saying, “At least Donald Trump has the decency to slowly fall apart until he’s dragged off in handcuffs like a boss! I mean that’s how I want to leave SNL!”

Michael Che and co-anchor Colin Jost also comment on how the United States – North Korea Summit fell apart, Donald Trump’s bizarre speech at a Conservative convention, R. Kelly and his troubles, the Philadelphia Phillies giving a monster contract to Bryce Harper, a fight at an Alabama crab leg buffet, Target lingerie and a man who faked his own kidnapping to get out of paying off a Super Bowl bet.

Also on Weekend Update, cast members Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant create two new Update characters which we probably won’t see again. They play the Starkie Sisters, Vaneta and Wylene, the owners of Smokery Farms, who visit Weekend Update to comment on “Picasso,” the pig who has made a fortune selling his artwork. The Starkies are against meat animals getting too smart and getting too much attention for it. They’re also against staying in character. The best part of the Starkie Sisters, is watching them break out in laughter as they’re forced to smell the basket of farm meats they brought on set with them. We can only imagine how rank those meats had become sitting underneath set lights during rehearsals all Saturday. Fortunately, we don’t have to, the ladies will let us know.

We have the promos for tonight’s encore SNL below for you to watch. In the first promo, John Mulaney takes us back in time to show us the multiple failed auditions he went through to try to become a Saturday Night Live cast member. In the next set, Mulaney is joined by musical guest Thomas Rhett and Kate McKinnon who tells us how proud Mulaney and Rhett are going to make their families and then we get a taste of Mulaney’s writing from his days as an SNL staffer.

John Mulaney hosts a repeat episode of Saturday Night Live tonight with musical guest Thomas Rhett at 11:30pm et on NBC!

In two weeks, it’s the Saturday Night Live – Season 45 premiere hosted by Woody Harrelson with musical guest Billie Eilish!

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