‘Saturday Night Live’: Tom Hanks’ Viral Character David S. Pumpkins Returns (VIDEO)
Beware the prisoners of Cellblock 666, especially that curly-haired fellow in the jack-o’-lantern suit. Yes, Tom Hanks returned to play David S. Pumpkins on Saturday Night Live on October 29.
In one of the sketches on the NBC show Saturday night, Ego Nwodim, Andrew Dismukes, and host/musical guest Jack Harlow play theme park attendees braving Cellblock 666, “a terrifying tour of this petrifying prison, where each cell holds an iconic fright from the silver scream,” as Kenan Thompson’s tour guide says.
Will Heath/NBC
Sure enough, the trio comes face to face with Michael Myers from Halloween, Annabelle from The Conjuring, Pennywise from It, Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street, and… David S. Pumpkins, flanked as always by dancing skeletons played by Mikey Day and SNL alum Bobby Moynihan.
Dismukes’ character points out that David isn’t a horror-movie character, but Harlow’s character doesn’t mind. “I was kind of feeling David Pumpkins,” the latter says. “Nice change of pace.”
And David pops up again and again in the ride, as riders try to figure out his deal. After hearing that David is from Ibiza, for example, Dismukes’ character notes that the dude doesn’t have a Spanish accent. “Yo, he said he was from there,” Harlow’s character responds. “Doesn’t mean he grew up there. Let him write his own story.”
David S. Pumpkins made his debut six years ago, as Hanks hosted a Season 42 episode of SNL, and the character made a comeback as “David S. Pimpkins” in the “Rap Song” short in that season’s finale. And in 2017, NBC trotted out The David S. Pumpkins Halloween Special, an animated half-hour featuring the voices of Hanks, Day, Moynihan, and other SNL talent.
In a 2017 Vulture interview, Moynihan, Day, and SNL writer Streeter Seidell discussed creating David S. Pumpkins — and tried to explain the character’s unexpected, runaway popularity. “It’s this weird alchemy of Halloween, the best host ever, the time of the country, and just a silly song,” Day said. “It all kind of came together.”
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