Michael B. Jordan hosts SNL tonight with musical guest Lil Baby!
Michael vs. Michael pic.twitter.com/Lydsyq21Xg
- Saturday Night Live - SNL (@nbcsnl) January 25, 2023
• Actor and director Michael B. Jordan makes his hosting debut on SNL tonight! He's the eighth first time host so far this season, though he did "act" as the guest host introducing Drake and 21 Savage in a mock up of an SNL performance in one of the promotional videos they released for their collaborative album, Her Loss late last year.
• He's the third Creed star to ever host the show, the first being Sylvester Stallone who hosted in 1997 and the second being Jonathan Majors who hosted in November 2021.
• This will be rapper Lil Baby's second time on SNL, but the first time he's there as the main musical guest. He first appeared as a guest during one of DJ Khaled's performances in the May 2019 Paull Rudd hosted episode.
Michael B. Jordan at read-thru!!! pic.twitter.com/xfryMGS8dN
- Saturday Night Live - SNL (@nbcsnl) January 26, 2023
• Michael looking cute at the table read!
https://instagram.com/p/Cn7JxaDuX3D
• The folks at SNL are apparently very excited that Michael is guest hosting this week, and shared this pic of Michael with a body pillow that has a picture of him screen printed on him that has apparently been living at the SNL offices for the past decade.
• In an interview with Jimmy Fallon, Michael says that he was told about the pillow as soon as he got to the SNL offices. He doesn't name names, but apparently it was a present from one of the employees to one of the producers. The producer told Michael that with SNLs crazy hours, they just sleep when they can and with whatever is within reach and that the pillow has been passed around to many people over the ten years it's lived at the office.
• Apparently the Aubrey Plaza episode caused SNL to hit a ratings high last weekend. The episode received a 0.98 rating with the 18-49 demo, the highest of the season so far. It drew 4.8 million viewers according to Nielsen data, the second largest audience of the season after Steve Martin/Martin Short's December 10 episode which drew 5.1 million viewers.
• The show released a behind the scenes look at the M3gan 2.0 pre-tape earlier this week. Chloe Fineman reveals that Mikey Day told her that she should play M3gan on the show and then she talked it over with Aubrey which resulted in the sketch. Fineman has some fun scaring Day and Punkie Johnson before we get to see some of the production work that goes into creating a pre-taped sketch.
• Bowen Yang went on Late Night with Seth Meyers to promote the show and he talked about playing George Santos and tells us how Wicked dance rehearsals are going.
• In a recent interview, Vera Drew, the director of the queer superhero parody comedy The People's Joker, revealed that in the wake of it suddenly getting pulled from competition at the Toronto International Film Festival after its premiere last year and mounting legal pressure from Warner Brothers, SNL featured player Sarah Sherman requested to be recast. In the film Sherman originally voiced an animated portrayal of Lorne Michaels. The role is reportedly very unflattering, and the performance was done before Sherman got on SNL. She has since been replaced with comedian Maria Bamford, and Drew declined to comment on Sherman's departure from the film.
• Pedro Pascal was announced as the host of next week's episode with musical guest Coldplay!
• And finally, though the SNL Postproduction team voted to authorize a strike, their union has not yet called for a strike. A member of the Postproduction team told THR: "we feel that the NBCUniversal labor team that is on the other side of the table to this just have not really responded in a timely manner or in a substantial manner, really, to address data points that were submitted to them." The member added, "The show works at such a fast pace, we know the company knows how to do things quickly and effectively, so we want to see that happening on the negotiation side from them.”
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