It takes a lot to get banned from Saturday Night Live. Sinead O’Connor ripped up a photo of the Pope. Kanye West ranted pro-Trump nonsense. Martin Lawrence ranted about feminine hygiene. The Replacements got too drunk. The hardcore band Fear destroyed the stage. Elvis Costello played the wrong song (then later got un-banned, because he’s Elvis Costello).
Cypress Hill also got banned — or so they claim. Their crime? On a 1993 episode alongside host Shannen Doherty, one member of the legendary hip-hop group, DJ Muggs, smoked a joint onstage. According to The Wrap, the group talked about the incident at a TCA panel for the forthcoming doc Cypress Hill: Insane in the Brain.
“I kind of like the fact that we’re banned,” said member Sen Dog. “The whole thing about being banned, it’s punk rock in itself. I would like to leave it like that. If the guys wanted to do it, then that’d be something we could talk about or whatever, but I kind of like that idea of being the outlaws that are not allowed around town.”
B Real, another bandmate, agreed. “I don’t mind the ban aspect of it,” he said, “because, you know, we’re in the company of some greats that have been banned, and that’s OK with us.”
Thing is, they might be banned. An SNL insider told The Wrap that there’s actually no ban on any act, including Cypress Hill (or, for that matter, Kanye).
Still, if Cypress Hill — who, in the ‘90s, became the first hip-hop act sell multi-platinum albums — know what they’ll do if they ever return to 30 Rock.
“We had a plan that we were going to do that would have just blown their goddamn minds if we had done it,” said B Real. “But it turned out the way it turned out. So, if we were to get unbanned and do it again, probably the plan we had set in the first place will initially take off and we’ll get banned again.”
Doja Cat is one of the most entertaining personalities in music, so naturally, fans and friends would love to see more of her outside of singles and albums. She’s a hoot on social media, but some have wondered how she’d fare on the Saturday Night Live stage as a host. It turns out that’s something Doja has given some thought to, and the prospect both excited and intimidates her.
In a new Billboard interview, Doja was asked if she’d want an SNL hosting gig and she replied, “I like the idea of doing that because I love, obviously, to tell jokes. But it’s a little nerve-racking because it’s something friends have suggested to me, [doing] stand-up or comedy. That would kind of be my first gig. Just the thought of that terrifies me a little bit.”
Speaking of SNL, one of the show’s icons is somebody Doja would like to meet, as she said, “I really want to meet Tracee Ellis Ross — and at the same time, I’m terrified because, to me, she’s the boss at the end of the game of life that I’m living. Her and Maya Rudolph.”
She also discussed her relationship with social media, saying, “People are always like, ‘What’s your Finsta,’ and I don’t want one. I don’t like the idea of having to juggle social media, which already sucks as it is. Not to say it hasn’t helped me so f*cking much, but the way I feel about Instagram is: I go on, look at pictures of makeup and fashion and cats, and that’s pretty much it. I’ve unfollowed everyone who is a person that I know.”
Over its four-and-a-half decades, Saturday Night Live has had plenty of Mad Libs-y host-musical guest(s) pairings. Al Gore and Phish. Tony Danza and Laurie Anderson. Old school entertainer Milton Berle and free jazz legend Ornette Coleman. Business magazine founder Steve Forbes and anti-capitalist rockers Rage Against the Machine. Some even become memes. There’s even an entire Twitter account dedicated to hosts improbably introducing musicians. So here’s another.
As per Deadline, for the episode of Jan. 29, the live sketch show has recruited beloved character actor Willem Dafoe and — why not! — pop goddess Katy Perry. For Perry, who is in the midst of her first Las Vegas residency, it’s her fourth time on the show. For Dafoe, it’s his first. Dafoe isn’t exactly a comedic actor, preferring serious art cinema and cutting up the occasional blockbuster, but he can be very funny. Witness The Lighthouse, in which he out-there enough to inspire an SNL sketch, well before they finally invited him on.
Besides, who doesn’t look Willem Dafoe? He can currently be seen in two big movies: dusting off his old Green Goblin duds in Spider-Man: No Way Home, which is making all the money, and Guillermo del Toro’s star-studded remake of Nightmare Alley, which is not. He had a busy 2021, appearing in yet another Wes Anderson movie (The French Dispatch), yet another Paul Schrader (The Card Counter), and yet another with perhaps his most frequent collaborator, eccentric weirdo Abel Ferrara (Siberia).
Before this hot mess begins, feel free to visit the aforementioned SNL host/musical guest(s) Twitter account, where you see such inventive sights as this.
Hip-hop fans got a pleasant surprise over the weekend when Freddie Gibbs popped up in a Saturday Night Live sketch, one that didn’t make the broadcast but was still shared on the SNL YouTube page.
The skit is a music video for a song called “All On Me” by an up-and-coming rapper named Lil T (played by Chris Redd), who just got signed to a record deal and is celebrating by spending loads of money in the club alongside his entourage, played by Kenan Thompson and host Ariana DeBose. Lil T is taken aback when he sees the massive tab he’s run up, though, so he starts being more frugal. Partway into the song, Gibbs pops up, rapping, “OK, Lil T, you up in the big leagues / See you spending big G’s like your boy Freddie G / Young’uns making money is something I like to see / Send him one big bottle of Ace, it’s on me.” Then, in accordance with the “club code,” Redd sends Gibbs something back: a bottle of Diet Coke. After chastising Redd for that move, Gibbs continues, “Old dude’s just being cheap / Shots for everybody and they all on T.”
Gibbs shared a clip of the skit and wrote on Twitter, “Man shout out my dog Chris Redd for putting me on this SNL sh*t. Live from New York!!!”
Man shout out my dog Chris Redd for putting me on this SNL shit. Live from New York!!! pic.twitter.com/eJoLQxyMQQ
The newest strain of COVID is so easily contractible, celebs and artists are trying to stay as safe as possible. Roddy Ricch has just pulled out of his anticipated SNL performance due to COVID concerns. Roddy Ricch Pulls Out Of SNL Performance Roddy Ricch had a big performance coming up as the musical guest of […]
Bad news for Roddy Ricch fans who were looking forward to seeing his performance on SNL this weekend: The Compton rapper was forced to pull out of his appearance — his SNL debut — due to COVID. Roddy shared the announcement on his Instagram Story, revealing that someone close to him tested positive, forcing him to forego the live show, but said that he was working on getting a new performance date.
Meanwhile, NBC has announced that Roddy’s replacement for this week’s episode will be Bleachers. Obviously, this throws off the rollout for Roddy’s recently released album Live Life Fast, but perhaps a later appearance may renew interest in the album and extend its shelf life. Roddy, whose 2020 megahit “The Box” was recently certified diamond, had previously supported the album with the singles “Late At Night” and “25 Million.” Live Life Fast debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200, marking Roddy’s second top-10 debut, with 62,000 album-equivalent units sold.
However, if Roddy so chooses, he could potentially peg his SNL debut to another release. The rapper has said he’s working on the third installment of his fan-favorite Feed The Streets mixtape series and plans to release it later this year.
Roddy Ricch is fresh off the release of his second album, Live Life Fast, which debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. So, it’s only right that he is also Saturday Night Live‘s first musical guest of 2022, helping to kick off the remainder of the season when the show returns on January 15. The show will be hosted by Ariana DeBose, who was recently nominated for a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Anita in Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of West Side Story.
While Roddy is only weeks removed from the release of his latest album, it doesn’t look like he wants to rest on his laurels at all. He’s already begun promising that a new mixtape, Feed The Streets 3, will be released sometime this year as well. However, that may not come soon; he’s still promoting Live Life Fast, for which he’s released only a handful of singles, including “Late At Night,” which dropped last summer, and “25 Million,” which followed up the release of the album. Roddy’s known for slow-playing his rollouts — the video for “The Box” didn’t come out until weeks after it had dominated the charts — so fans will have plenty of opportunities to revisit the new album before the mixtape drops… including, of course, his performance on next week’s SNL.
(Editor’s note: This piece was originally published in 2018 but we’re republishing it today because it’s, well, that time of year. Enjoy.)
“You grow up Jewish and you can’t help it, it’s a big part of your life being the person who’s not celebrating Christmas,” TV Funhouse creator and former Saturday Night Live writer Robert Smigel told us recently. (Smigel, by the way, is also the mad genius behind Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.)
The accuracy of this remark is not lost on me as someone who was raised half-Jewish and half-Catholic and kept on the outside looking in at Christmas revelry during part of my childhood (before my parents eventually relented and started celebrating both — which is its own weird thing). That’s why Smigel’s “Christmastime For The Jews” means so much. Born on the December 17, 2005 episode of Saturday Night Live and inspired by a love of claymation Christmas specials, Wall of Sound music, and the desire to merge them with Jewish and pop culture references that swing from clever to delightfully absurd, this lovingly crafted sketch/song exists as something Jews (and half-Jews) can call our very own.
The weight of what “Christmastime For The Jews” means to people who share an annual laugh, let the song dance around in their head for a few days, and feel utterly seen by its timeless jokes about the Jewish experience is not lost on the people who created it. Partly because they feel it too and partly because, as you’ll see, an immense amount of time, effort, and heart went into making it and getting it as close to perfect as possible. And since you’re reading this, you likely love the sketch and feel like they got pretty close. In the off chance you’ve not seen it, or just want to relive it again, here it is below.
To better appreciate the story of “Christmastime For The Jews,” you have to go back to Smigel’s past tinkerings with the themes that came to life in the sketch. Here’s the short(ish) version: In 1987, Smigel wrote a sketch called “The Assimilated Jew’s Christmas” that was, by his account, a much earlier (and direct) attempt at speaking to the dearth of Jewish holiday standards, at least in contrast to those orbiting Christmas. Smigel acknowledges that the sketch didn’t quite “hit” in the same way that others like “Hanukkah Harry,” Adam Sandler’s “Hanukkah Song,” and “Christmastime For The Jews” did among SNL‘s best-remembered contributions to Jewish holiday pop culture (which are basically the only contributions to Jewish holiday pop culture over the last 30 years). It features Al Franken as Henry Kissinger selling an album of Jewish Christmas songs that were “acceptable for Jewish people to hear, because all Jews love Christmas carols,” says Smigel. “Christmas carols are so much better than Hanukkah songs,” he (accurately) adds before offering a reminder that many great Christmas carols were actually written by Jews.
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“The Assimilated Jew’s Christmas” and “Christmastime For The Jews” were far from Smigel’s only attempts at holiday parody. “I did two that involved a Charlie Brown Christmas, which is my favorite half-hour of television ever, probably,” he says. “I did a big one after 9/11 that was a Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer parody.”
Smigel also has an affinity for crafting what he calls “silly musical stuff” that goes back to the late ’80s, as well. He authored a jingle for the first “Mister Short-Term Memory” sketch in 1988. More jingles followed before they became so common on the show that Smigel says they were mocked by The Simpsons.
Smigel left SNL in the early ’90s to work as head writer for Conan O’Brien during his foray into late-night before joining TheDana Carvey Show, where he debuted “The Ambiguously Gay Duo.” Cartoons had also been an interest of Smigel’s going back to his time on SNL with “Cluckin Chicken” (where he worked, for the first time, with animator and eventual TV Funhouse cohort J.J. Sedelmaier). He was eager to continue playing in that space, conjuring up ideas for “Fun With Real Audio” and “The X-Presidents” before pitching SNL producer Lorne Michaels on an idea for a unique path back to the show after The Dana Carvey Show got canceled. That idea eventually became the TV Funhouse so many of us came to know and love.
“I was aware of how much fun I was having reaching back into what made me laugh as a child,” says Smigel. “It felt very pure and very exciting.”
Which brings us back around to “Christmastime for the Jews.” The stories we collected about its creation, from Smigel and the creative team involved — contributing writers Julie Klausner (Difficult People), Eric Drysdale (Full Frontal With Samantha Bee), Scott Jacobson (Bob’s Burgers), musical director Steven Gold, director David Brooks, producer Samantha Scharff, and legendary singer Darlene Love — shed some light on the mixture of insanity, brilliance, stubbornness, and catharsis that ran through the entire three-week production in addition to the irony of launching the same night that internet-culture game changer “Lazy Sunday” launched.
A lot has changed in the last week. On Monday, society was largely back to normal, as it had been for months and months, all thanks to vaccines. People were gearing up for some holiday travel. They were going to in-person events, like movies and Broadway shows. In the back of everyone’s mind, there was the Omicron variant, far more transmissible but also — if you’re vaxxed — far less deadly. Then cases started spiking. New York City, once the epicenter of the pandemic, suddenly had days of record-breaking cases. Shows got cancelled. Events were postponed. (People are still flocking to the movies, or at least one of them.) And now it’s affected tonight’s Paul Rudd-hosted SNL, too.
As per Deadline, what was supposed to be a joyous occasion — last episode of 2021, host Paul Rudd’s acceptance into the “five timer’s club” — will still happen. It will just be dramatically scaled back.
“Due to the recent spike in the Omicron variant and out of an abundance of caution, there will be no live audience for tonight’s taping of Saturday Night Live and the show will have limited cast and crew,” a spokesperson for SNL announced on Saturday. “The show continues to follow all government safety guidelines in addition to a rigorous testing protocol.”
It’s a return to SNL in the pre-vaccine days of the pandemic, when the performers played to little or no crowds, doing their best to deliver laughs while social distancing and staying safe. At the early day of the pandemic, in spring of 2020, the show dramatically revamped itself, with performers doing everything from their home over their computers and assorted gizmos, with sometimes outside-the-box results.
SNL, of course, records in New York City, which has transformed from a largely reawaken mecca of culture and commerce into a place of long COVID testing lines, people scrambling to get results before boarding planes, trains, and automobiles. On Friday, New York State counted 21,027 new cases — a record, up from the original peak of 19,942, in January of 2021.
But the show must go on, albeit a modified version. Host Rudd will be joined by musical guest Charli XCX.
Last night, for the second time in her career, Billie Eilish brought her talents to Saturday Night Live. The last time she appeared, back in 2019, she defied gravity with a performance of “Bad Guy.” This time around, the singer signed on as both musical guest and host. In one sketch, the singer and cast member Heidi Gardner joined forces to update the story of Jesus’ birth.
The sketch was entitled “Hip-Hop Nativity,” and it found the two recruiting a group of actors to play many of the characters from the biblical story. They taught them how to twerk, strut, and pole dance. The actors initially raises issues over the biblical update, but they eventually went along with it. The closing bit also jokingly revealed that Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda will direct a full-length film version of Billie and Gardner’s updated nativity story.
In addition to the “Hip-Hop Nativity” skit, Billie also performed “Happier Than Ever” and “Male Fantasy” on SNL. The former made for an epic performance while the latter was a bit darker and relaxed.
In non-Eilish SNL news, the episode also featured Kate McKinnon returning as Dr. Fauci while Weekend Update skewered Jussie Smollett and the torching of the Fox News Christmas tree.
You can watch Billie’s Hip-Hop Nativity sketch in the video above.
