Who is Hosting Saturday Night Live Tonight: September 30, 2017

Tonight, Ryan Gosling hosts the Season 43 premiere of Saturday Night Live!

This is that day of the year that sometimes feels like it’s never going to get here. It’s basically the Christmas of Variety Sketch Series season. The return of the recent Emmy Award winning Saturday Night Live for a brand new season. You’ve made it through all the encore presentations (AKA reruns) of SNL and new, fresh shows are back. Once again, when we see news stories that cover the front pages, we’ll know somewhere high atop the GE Building at 30 Rock, the creative minds at Saturday Night Live are working feverishly to make those headlines into hysterical sketches.

So what can we expect in the is first Saturday Night Live of the new season? Ryan Gosling is hosting, and based on the first time he hosted back in December of 2015, we can expect a lot of fun this episode with a host who can’t always stay in character. On the December 5, 2015 episode, the funniest sketch of the night featured him, Cecily Strong and Emmy Award winner Kate McKinnon as rural folk who were being questioned by government agents (Bobby Moynihan and Aidy Bryant) about being abducted by aliens. Before it was over, Kate McKinnon’s character (Miss Rafferty) had everyone losing it. No one’s giggling was safe from her overly specific and mortifying experiences with the extraterrestrials. Cover your mouths as much as you want cast members. We know you’re laughing hard! So, if there’s one return sketch on this new episode of Saturday Night Live, we hope to see, it’s Miss Rafferty and company again.

Also tonight, Ryan Gosling will be promoting his new sci-fi action and adventure film, Blade Runner 2049, co-starring the original Blade Runner, Harrison Ford and opening in theaters nationwide, next Friday, October 6, 2017. A film like this just screams for the SNL treatment, so we may get a “Blade Runner” parody sketch tonight, after all, this show loves to do robot sketches. And who knows? Will there be a Harrison Ford cameo on SNL premiere night? Tune in tonight to find out.

Another thing we’ll look for tonight in the season premiere is how Trump-heavy this season is going to be. If tonight is any indication of how much the entire season will involve Donald Trump, then it’s showing no sign of slowing down on parodying the President. Alec Baldwin has not only confirmed that he will return to Saturday Night Live to continue impersonating U.S. President #45, but he has also confirmed that he will be at Studio 8-H as Trump for tonight’s season premiere. Sounds like we may get a cold open or a sketch involving the Commander-in-Chief and the current controversy in the NFL over players kneeling during the National Anthem.

Another fun thing to watch for in any SNL premiere night is how involved are the “new people”. The Saturday Night Live cast is getting 3 new members tonight. They include stand up comedian Chris Redd, musical comedian Luke Null and sketch and improv performer Heidi Gardner. These three will debut tonight as featured performers and fill in the gaping cast holes left by the departures of Bobby Moynihan, Vanessa Bayer and Sasheer Zamata. Last season, when brand new cast members Mikey Day and Alex Moffat came on board, they became instant workhorses and already have recurring characters (Donald Jr. & Eric Trump). And the other newcomer from last season, Melissa Villaseñor dazzled us with her variety of celebrity impressions. Tonight, we’ll see how quickly these new three jump into the scheme of things. Plus, SNL is adding a ton of new writers this season, which will shake up the comedic tone of the sketches. You can find out more about the new cast members and writers headed to SNL, right here on the IBang.

One thing we do know for sure tonight is that all the time zones across America will be seeing Saturday Night Live as it happens live from New York, all at the same time. Executive producer Lorne Michaels and the network have decided to keep up that gimmick which they started late into Season 42.

In the promos for tonight’s Season 43 SNL premiere, Ryan Gosling has an ominous declaration that tonight he’s giving the world his soul when he hosts Saturday Night Live, if he can get in the building. Another is a quick snippet featuring a remix version of his first time hosting gig from 2015 and finally Gosling appears with tonight’s musical guest Jay-Z, where both host and musical guest are doing really well hiding their excitement.

The Season 43 premiere of Saturday Night Live hosted by Ryan Gosling with musical guest Jay-Z happens tonight at 11:30pm on NBC!

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