Who is Hosting Saturday Night Live Tonight: September 26, 2020
One week before the season premiere, Saturday Night Live closes out its summer of reruns with an SNL repeat hosted by Emmy Award winner Eddie Murphy!
Next week, Saturday Night Live is back in Studio 8-H for it’s 46th season premiere hosted by comedy superstar Chris Rock. However, this Saturday is all about Eddie Murphy and the repeat episode that won big at the Emmy Awards. What better way for SNL to celebrate alum Eddie Murphy’s Emmy Award winning performance than to air the episode that finally brought Murph Emmy gold 40 years after he joined the Saturday Night Live cast.
Tonight’s Saturday Night Live repeat is the episode that earned Eddie Murphy an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series. It originally aired on December 21st, 2019 which was Saturday Night Live‘s mid-season finale from late last year. Murph was an SNL cast member back in SNL‘s few Lorne Michaels-less years from 1980 to 1984. He was nominated for two Primetime Emmys during his SNL run as a cast member where he’s been credited with saving Saturday Night Live back then. Unfortunately, it took until 2020 before he finally took home an Emmy Award.
Rumors of bad blood between Murphy and SNL was the reason why there was 35 years between Eddie Murphy’s hosting gigs, but Oscar buzz for his 2019 film “Dolemite Is My Name,” and Murphy’s own insistence that he was working on a new stand up tour, lured him back home to the variety show that made Eddie Murphy a household name. Even though an Oscar nomination didn’t materialize, the appearance did turn into Emmy gold.
Eddie Murphy’s victory wasn’t completely one-sided when he hosted SNL last December. The variety series scored its biggest ratings bonanza in over a decade when Murphy hosted the show. Once viewers who recorded Saturday Night Live that night and then watched it later were taken into account, it turned out that over 16 million people watched Eddie Murphy’s triumphant return to Saturday Night Live. That’s about 12 million viewers than SNL pulls in on a regular Saturday night.
Those 16+ million who were hoping to see Eddie Murphy resurrect his characters and impressions from his 1980’s SNL work were not disappointed. All his characters were all back with a modern twist.
Murph’s character Velvet Jones who happens to be a best selling author as well as a pimp appeared in a “Black Jeopardy” sketch. The live audience screamed for the return of “Mister Robinson’s Neighborhood“, which is Murphy’s parody of “Mister Rogers Neighborhood“. Instead of the 1980’s ghetto where he used to live, now Mister Robinson was in a gentrified neighborhood and teaching the boys and girls all about “squatter’s rights.”
And Eddie Murphy’s signature impression of Buckwheat from the “Little Rascals” was also back on SNL and competing on “The Masked Singer” reality series. Eddie Murphy saves perhaps his most popular character for an appearance on Weekend Update, which we’ll discuss in a moment.
There are a couple of sketches on tap in tonight’s SNL – Eddie Murphy encore episode that didn’t involve his old characters. SNL brought back its “Baking Championships” sketch with a holiday edition in this evening’s show. Eddie Murphy and the cast play contestants on a baking show who end up creating the ugliest cakes imaginable. When this sketch originally aired, Eddie Murphy had a slip of the tongue when he improvised a line and screamed “We can win this shit!” The word “shit” may be bleeped out, but it would be hard to cover up Murphy’s classic reaction to realizing he’s back on network television.
This evening’s repeat closes with a Christmas sketch where Eddie Murphy plays one of Santa’s elves at the North Pole where a horrible attack has just taken place at Santa’s workshop. Murphy’s elf was an eyewitness to the tragedy and is on the Elf News with anchorman Rick Sugarplum (cast member Alex Moffat) giving his hilarious account.
The SNL 2019 mid-season finale starring Eddie Murphy was a cameo-packed affair. The SNL Cold Open and Murphy’s monologue were packed with comedy superstars. Tonight’s Saturday Night Live repeat opens with a celebrity filled parody of a Democratic candidates debate.
It was a full stage during the SNL Cold Open for its opening debate sketch. Maya Rudolph was on hand as Senator Kamala Harris, a role she’ll start playing again next week for SNL – Season 46. Also, Fred Armisen plays surprise candidate Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Rachel Dratch appears as Senator Amy Klobuchar, Larry David is back as Senator Bernie Sanders and Jason Sudeikis got a turn to play former Veep Joe Biden. SNL announced that Jim Carrey will be taking over the Biden impression in the new season. He’ll be up against Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump who also made an appearance in this evening’s cold opener.
As exciting as the cameos in the SNL Cold Open were for the audience, it was the surprise appearances during Eddie Murphy’s SNL monologue segment that made the fans scream. First, Murph talked about being a father of ten. Yep, ten. He also talked about his early days on SNL and made sure to plug his Netflix film, “Dolemite is My Name.” Then, the surprises started appearing on stage.
Tracy Morgan, Chris Rock (next week’s SNL season premiere host), Dave Chappelle and Kenan Thompson all come out to offer support to Eddie Murphy and pitch sketch ideas for the show. Just seeing this much comedy greatness on one stage at one time is worth watching tonight’s Saturday Night Live encore presentation all over again.
Weekend Update gets started as usual this evening with Donald Trump leading the news segment. Anchormen Colin Jost and Michael Che discuss the President’s illegal activities in the Ukraine when they’re interrupted by the one and only, Gumby! Eddie Murphy brings his classic take on the 1950’s & 60’s stop-motion claymation cartoon character to the Weekend Update desk.
Fans couldn’t wait to hear Gumby’s 40 year old catchphrase, “I’m Gumby, dammit!” screamed at Jost and Che by Murphy. Gumby hasn’t soften his tone at all since his last SNL appearance 35 years ago. Still angry as ever, Gumby complained about not getting written into any sketches on the show, plus he gets into the rift between him and his now former sidekick Pokey the Pony.
Once Jost and Che get their composure back after a run-in by Gumby, they discuss topics including the digital effects in the movie “Cats“, the gay kiss in “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker“, a opossum brought on board a JetBlue flight, and “They” being named the Word of the Year.
There’s more guests at the Weekend Update desk in this edition, but they kind of pale in comparison to the return of Gumby. Cast member Pete Davidson discusses the scrutiny he gets when he dates someone famous and then announces he’s going into treatment in a depressing let-down after the Gumby fun. Cast member Cecily Strong rounds out the Weekend Update recurring characters when she appears as Fox News host Judge Jeanine Pirro. The honorable Judge Pirro is on Update to talk impeachment and puke up that wine she’s been downing all day.
Finally, Weekend Update ends with its annual holiday tradition where Colin Jost and Michael Che write jokes for each other to perform without seeing them beforehand. Naturally, during this hilarious joke exchange, Jost comes off as racist while Che sounds like a sexual deviant.
We also get an SNL Short in this holiday episode of Saturday Night Live. Regular SNL viewers will remember this premise when it was done with Matt Damon the season before. It’s a family scene featuring Eddie Murphy as the head of the house reflecting on how wonderful it is to have the whole family home for Christmas. These scenes are interrupted by scenes of pure holiday chaos and the living hell that having relatives stay with you can be at Christmas time.
The original promos for tonight’s SNL repeat are below for you to enjoy. Our first is one of Saturday Night Live’s extended clip promos. It’s a four-minute Best of Eddie Murphy from his Saturday Night Live days as a cast member in the 80’s. It includes all of Murph’s vintage characters, impressions and moments on SNL, including Mister Robinson’s Neighborhood, Stevie Wonder and his classic “White Like Me” short which was one of SNL‘s early filmed bits.
Our next set of promos features host Eddie Murphy, musical guest Lizzo and cast member Kenan Thompson who has a thank you for Santa for the wonderful gift of tonight’s show. Also, Lizzo demonstrates some “sexual chocolate” twerking moves and she gets off a line that cracks up Eddie Murphy. Who would have thought Lizzo was the funny one in this trio!?
Eddie Murphy wraps up Saturday Night Live‘s summer hiatus tonight when he hosts a repeat SNL with musical guest Lizzo at 11:30pm et on NBC.
Saturday Night Live returns LIVE next weekend with the SNL Season 46 Premiere hosted by the incomparable Chris Rock!
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