Leslie Jones revealed which SNL host she was “hands-down” sure would flop.
The former SNL cast member, 50, said she couldn’t believe it when Woody Harrelson, 65, actually pulled off the hosting gig.
“When Woody came, we were, like—because at the time I think he was smoking weed— and he was not good in rehearsal,” she said on an episode of the YouTube show Slice Joint. “He was f---ing up so bad, and we were like, ‘Oh, this is going to be one of the worst shows ever.’”
Harrelson has hosted SNL five times between 1989 and 2023. The three-time Oscar nominee (The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), The Messenger (2009), Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)) hosted once during Jones’ five-season run, in 2014. Jones said that, despite his rocky start, Harrelson “became a whole different person” when the cameras started rolling. The cast lauded him during a quick-change.
“We’re like, ‘Woody, you’re f---ing killing it,’” she said, continuing, “He was like, ‘Did you guys think I was going to do bad or something?’ And we were like, ‘Yes, Motherf---er, you were gonna f--- it up.’”
Harrelson may have impressed Jones in 2014, but his latest SNL episode wasn’t such a hit. During the notorious bombing of his 2023 monologue, the audience met his scattered jokes about drugs, guns, and his anti-vax ideologies with awkward silence.
Those jokes came shortly after Harrelson spread the conspiracy that 5G caused COVID-19 on Instagram and told Vanity Fair that mask-wearing is “absurd.” Though it was his fifth time hosting SNL, he didn’t receive the same fanfare as other stars who’d joined the elite “Five Timers Club.” SNL evidently couldn’t muster up the usual amount of celebrity cameos for him. But Harrelson didn’t care that he was under fire.
“Well, people told me it was, shall we say, trending,” he said in a 2023 interview with Esquire. “No, I don’t look at that s--t. I feel like, ‘I said it on SNL.’ I don’t need to go further with it… other than to say—well, no, I won’t. Never mind. That’s enough. But it don’t change my life one bit. Not one bit, if the mainstream media wants to have a go at you, right? My life is still wonderful.”
