It’s that time yet again, folks: The regular update from the bookers of Saturday Night Live, revealing which guest hosts we’ll be rooting for or against in the coming weeks, as well as which musical guests we’ll be planning our Saturday night bathroom visits around. This time, we’ve got two names for the first half of February (and two more in terms of music, but you know what we meant): Extremely large Houston Texans player J.J. Watt (accompanied by Luke Combs) on February 1, and RuPaul (with Justin Bieber in tow) on February 8.
RuPaul is exciting, obviously, but he’s also a trained performer who’s likely to fit in perfectly well on a weekly high-stakes sketch show. We’re far more fascinated by Watt, who joins a shockingly long line of sports stars strutting their alleged comedy chops in the world of live comedy, from baseball’s Billy Martin way back in 1986, to multiple appearances by Charles Barkley, to the surprisingly great turn Peyton Manning gave in 2007. For what it’s worth, Watt seems to know how to have fun on camera—while also reminding you of all the great benefits of Yahoo fantasy football and Greek yogurt, natch—as long as nobody leaves any hamburgers around the set to distract him from his work.
14 Comments
Peyton’s United Way bit was awesome, they should have JJ do a take on Terry Tate and check a few fools.
JJ Watt was also the gym teacher in Bad Moms, if I recall
SNL used to have athletes as hosts much more often than they have in the last decade – it’s been a few wrestlers and Charles Barkley (who I think was a last-minute replacement). Watt seems like he’ll be fine in the pretapes, at least…I just hope with Ru hosting they won’t go overboard with the bad camp they sometimes put out. He can do more.
We need a return to great camp
I agree…my issue isn’t with Ru, it’s with some of the SNL writers who aren’t very good at these types of sketches even though they have been writing them for many years. I’m hoping Bowen Yang can have some good stuff though.
RuPaul is hilarious whether he’s camping it up or not. I’ll be watching. Fastforwarding through Bieber, but I’ll be watching.
Yeah I feel like they’d usually have an athlete from the winning team after the World Series or Super Bowl. Haven’t really done that recently.
It’s dicey with athletes. Barkley was fun, Peyton Manning was good, the Rock is a natural. Then you get the Nanvy Kerrigan episode, or the Joe Montana/Walter Payton one.
Ru’s always been honest that he hates acting on camera instead of just improving at a club performance. But he did AJ on netflix now, so I hope he’ll find a good blend between script reading and a little bit of improv on SNL!
I wonder if they can afford to pay RuPaul enough to get him into drag.
I adore JJ Watt, person, am usually grateful for JJ Watt, player, but I’m not so sure about JJ Watt, actor.(JJ Watt, twitter feminist, is my favorite iteration of JJ Watt, though.)
I have a cousin/”aunt” (A first cousin of my dad’s, so technically first cousin once-removed if my relative name game is still on point) who adores that very large man, so my very cursory assessment of him outside of his sheer volume is good. This “twitter feminist” bit intrigues me, though — any examples in particular you could point out for my curiosity?
His girlfriend is Kealia Ohai, a soccer player who latterly was with the Houston Dash (just got traded to Chicago), and news stations were identifying her as “JJ Watt’s girlfriend” to talk about the trade and he LIT into them. Also he’s keeping people updated on his thoughts about Cheer and how much Jerry deserves to be on mat.He’s also done a ton for the city, particularly raising relief for Harvey damage.
Fun fact: when Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy” was popular, I for sure thought she was saying “Who that? Who that? I J.J. Watt” rather than “I G G Y.” I also heard “Black Widow baby” as “Black widdle baby” so I need to get my hearing checked and she needs to articulate better.(In both cases, my mishearing improved the songs tremendously. Hearing Iggy Azalea refer to herself as a black widdle baby makes that song incredibly listenable.)