Sometimes, a bit of shmoozing from the Saturday Night Live cast can go a long way for their celebrity hosts, John Mulaney and Pete Davidson revealed on Friday.
“When I was 25, I’d tell Oscar-winning hosts, I’d write their monologue and be like, ‘You’re gonna say all that. It’s gonna go great.’ And they’d tank eight times out of ten,” Mulaney, 43, who wrote on SNL for four seasons, told Davidson on his Pete Davidson Show live audience taping in Los Angeles, which was taped on May 9 at the Netflix Is a Joke festival but released on the streamer Friday.
“But when they get off—and they know they’ve tanked—you still have to be like, ‘It crushed,’” Davidson, 32, agreed.
Because many SNL hosts are actors who more often read scripts than write them, the show’s staff often writes their opening monologues on their behalf.
Mulaney, who returned six times as host after departing in 2012, reveled in the celebrity hosts’ lack of awareness.
“They’ll have ‘Actor Face,’” he said. “They sort of don’t get it, because they’re just an actor, you know?” he said, putting on a blank expression. “And they’d be like, ‘Hey, was that good?’ And you’re like, ‘No. Do you have ears?’”
Davidson, who left the show in 2022 after eight seasons as a cast member, revealed how he quells a host’s self-doubt with white lies.
“What I usually say is, ‘You’re really performing for the people at home,’” Davidson, who wrote his own stand-up monologue for his return show in 2023, said.
“Play for the camera,” Mulaney agreed, sarcastically adding, “The audience, they’re just there to help you, but they’re not gonna laugh a lot.”
If that doesn’t work, Davidson described another trick he’s used to get the host past an unresponsive audience.
“I always would go, ‘They’re tourists. They wait outside, and they try to win a lottery. Half of them probably don’t even speak English,’” he said, before snarkily adding, “They do. They’re big fans of the show. They camped outside.”
At the end, Mulaney revealed one final pep talk he used to get a high-profile host back up on their feet.
“A very big comedy star bombed—his own fault, because he was very difficult writing the monologue—but he gets off, he’s like, ‘Was that bad?’ And I went, ‘It’s bad acoustics,’” Mulaney recalled, pantomiming pointing around SNL’s Studio 8H in Rockefeller Center.
“It’s famously one of the best mic sound studios in the world,” he explained. “It used to be home to the NBC Orchestra. It’s a perfectly calibrated-sounding room.”
“Yeah, it’s a kill box,” Davidson agreed.
“But I was like, ‘Bad acoustics, homie. What can I tell you?’” Mulaney quipped.
