‘SNL’ Highlights: Emma Stone in 5-Timers Club, Bowen Yang’s George Santos Cold Open
Emma Stone hosted Saturday Night Live for a fifth time on Saturday, and during her opening monologue, she got her official Five-Timers Club jacket from fellow club members Tina Fey and Candice Bergen.
And Stone, currently starring on The Curse, got teary-eyed as she reflected on the significance of that moment. “This is amazing,” she said. “This has been a dream of mine since I was a kid, and it means so much that I get to share this with you guys, so thank you.”
Check out Stone’s induction and other highlights from Saturday’s SNL episode below.
Bowen Yang sings George Santos’ swan song
SNL’s cold open riffed on the congressional expulsion of former Rep. George Santos, with Bowen Yang once again playing the alleged fraudster. “This entire country has been bullying me just because I’m a proud gay thief,” Bowen’s Santos told reporters. “But what else is new? America hates to see a Latina queen winning.”
After admitting he’s “no longer Congressman Santos” — and is instead “regular old Professor Major General Reverend Astronaut Santos, Protector of the Realm, Princess of Genovia,” — the ex-politician broke into song, channeling Elton John with a performance of “Scandal in the Wind.”
Emma Stone joins the Five-Timers Club
Stone became the latest and youngest inductee into Saturday Night Live’s vaunted Five-Timers Club, and Fey and Bergen made surprise cameos to mark the her-storic achievement.
Stone was surprised, however, to find that the pockets of her Five-Timers Club jacket contained both a joint (“Oh, that must be Woody Harrelson’s jacket,” Bergen lamented) and a vaccine card (“Oh, then it’s definitely not Woody’s,” Fey quipped, referring to Harrelson’s controversial SNL monologue from February).
AI lets Punkie Johnson play Emma Stone — or maybe Emma Watson
Saturday’s Please Don’t Destroy short was based on the pretense that group member Martin Herlihy had a secret relationship with Stone — and that the editors had to use AI to fill in missing footage after a hard drive malfunction.
The “advanced AI technology” could only do so much, though, with Punkie Johnsonserving as Stone’s body double. “Oh, am I that bitch from Harry Potter?” Johnson asked. “That’s right! I’m Her-mee-own.”
Stone’s record producer makes her own kind of music
The Poor Things actor donned a curly gray wig and a gravelly voice to play a ‘60s record producer prophesying how Mama Cass’ “Make Your Own Kind of Music” would become “the perfect song to go under a slo-mo montage where the main character snaps and goes on a rampage.”
Wielding a saxophone as a shotgun, Stone’s Mitch Lester fought back against a zombie horde to the tune of the upbeat track. Then a flute became a sword with which Mitch’s prostitute got revenge on her big-wig clients. At the end of the sketch, however, Mama Cass (played by Chloe Troast) had her own idea for a “Make Your Own Kind of Music” needle drop…
Saturday Night Live, Saturdays, 11:30/10:30c, NBC and Peacock