Simu Liu tries to keep the peace between Saweetie and Kyle Mooney before Saturday’s SNL
The Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings star is all set to make his SNL hosting debut
Aux News Kyle Mooney
In another of this season’s intriguing and unexpected hosting choices, tomorrow’s Saturday Night Live will see Shang-Chi himself, Simu Liu, showing off his comic chops. Fans of the beloved, recently cancelled, and, apparently, behind-the-scenes fraught Canadian sitcom Kim’s Convenience already know Liu can reliably bring the funny, although it’s likely his lead role in MCU blockbuster Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings is what finally bought the Chinese-Canadian actor his ticket to 30 Rock.
And, sure, actor, stunt person, and seriously ripped action star Liu wasn’t the funniest part of Shang-Chi (Awkwafina, unsurprisingly, stole that honor), but the guy’s got a light touch when not kicking people in the face, and the Marvel formula allowed him plenty of opportunity to go for the action-laughs.
In this week’s promo for his episode, Liu is stuck playing peacemaker, as he and cast member Cecily Strong find themselves smack in the middle of a former-lovers’ quarrel between musical guest Saweetie and other cast member Kyle Mooney.
“Okay, is this going to be a problem?” Liu asks, before Mooney storms offstage, accusing the “Best Friend” rapper of breaking off what seems (at least on Kyle’s part) to have been a pretty serious thing. Now, nobody’s saying that Kyle Mooney and Saweetie couldn’t go for it in real life—they’re both approximately the exact same height, to pick out just one factor. But more likely this is all in Kyle’s head (even if Saweetie shrugs off the couple’s supposed breakup like it’s no big thing).
As for Liu, who’s been vocal about the lack of representation for Asian actors in Hollywood (and, as it turns out, Canada), his hosting stint will represent just the seventh Asian or Asian-American host in the show’s history. Which is nice, in a “What took you so long?” sort of way. (Not-so-fun fact: fellow martial arts star Jackie Chan was the first-ever Asian host in Saturday Night Live history—in the show’s 25th season.)
Look for Liu and fellow barrier-breaker Bowen Yang to have something to say about Saturday Night Live’s, shall we say, halting progress toward casting and hosting diversity. (Or at least toward not actively casting slur-spouting bigots as part of its ensemble.)
For Liu, though, Saturday will likely be all about weathering the signature whirlwind SNL live TV storm, and, apparently, keeping the cast’s various love lives from interfering. Keep it together, Kyle.
15 Comments
Shane Gillis has been making a reemergence lately, and unsurprisingly he’s still a trash person. He has some weird hatred for abortion- going so far as to say the insane Texas stuff is great and that he’d want more extreme methods to block abortion access.
commercials are news now?
Psst – you know the new rules around here. We lost coverage of The Simpsons and can only afford to cover SNL and it’s various advertisements now if they even catch you mentioning how bad the quality of the staff writing goes they might take away more… …uhh I mean, we’re all just happy to be engaging with advertisements hosted on this site regularly! Keep articles about ads coming!
As long as he wasn’t cheating on Leslie…
They should do a skit of Saweetie eating her *interesting* food combos and people reacting, like cheesesteaks with tartar sauce or doritos and apple butter.
dennis, cut the nonsense. Awkafina was not that funny in that movie. she was just alright. besides that, the movie was actually pretty good
Re: last paragraphs—Saweetie is part Filipino and Chinese, so this may be the most Asian SNL episode yet.
I finally got my chance to see ‘Shang-Chi’ at the movies on Monday – a long hospital stay stopped me seeing it as early as I wanted to – and I had an absolute blast. It gave me characters I cared about, lots of genuine fun, and, most surprisingly, slightly redeemed ‘Iron Man 3′, my least favourite MCU flick.
I agree about Shang Chi. Didn’t have a chance to see it at a theater, but man it was great. I like that it properly built on Iron Man 3 (which is actually one of my fave MCU movies) and that they addressed and took care of much of the problematic stuff from the Shang-Chi comics (I loved them, still do, but… there are some embarrassing things in them).
I really liked it too, especially after a disappointing Black Widow. I’m wondering if Trevor will come back in the sequels.
Just watched it last night and it was a ton of fun. The characters were great – Wenwu might be one of the best MCU villains – admittedly not a high bar, but Tony Leung killed it. The fight scenes are also some of the best in the MCU – the bus fight and the final fight between father and son were both incredible. Just a great, breezy watch from front to back.
Saweetie is a stupid fucking name. It’s just as stupid as Blac Chyna.
Jesus fucking Christ this site is garbage. If you’re going to devote an entire article to a fucking commercial, maybe at least do a Google search so that you understand the context of the lame joke they’re telling. Also, it’s just plain exhausting to have to read two paragraphs about SNL’s representation on an article about a fucking commercial.
Since Pete Davidson was spotted with Kim Kardashian in Palm Springs on Wednesday, taking it that he will not be appearing on tonight’s show?
There’s an airport in Palm Springs.