In the first «Saturday Night Live» since the SAG-AFTRA strike lifted, actor Timothée Chalamet relished the opportunity to promote his forthcoming movie, «Wonka,» in his opening monologue.
“Dune” actor and heartthrob Timothée Chalamet returned for his second round hosting “Saturday Night Live” in an episode that felt a little turned around, like pre-Thanksgiving leftovers.
With the SAG-AFTRA strike over this week, Chalamet was free to promote his upcoming movie projects, including “Wonka,” which hits theaters in December. (He did so, with mixed results, but we’ll get to that in a moment.) The mix of sketches this week relied on some repeated bits and characters from previous episodes, but without a lot of guest stars such as last week’s ringer Pedro Pascal, they sometimes fell flat or relied on Chalamet to carry the day. Unfortunately, the young actor’s rhythm felt off in the live sketches, particularly early on.
A sketch about the Museum of Hip Hop’s 50th anniversary celebration of the genre featured Chalamet as a white fur-clad rapper named Smokecheddathaassgetta, who through music streaming, is somehow the most popular hip-hop artist of all time. Things livened up when Chalamet performed one of his character’s terrible raps, but it was a slog compared to last week’s similarly themed and much sharper “Chef Show” with Nate Bargatze.
Another sketch on auditions for the audio narration of Britney Spears’s autobiography was a chance to trot out impersonations of Chalamet (Chloe Fineman, who also played Britney and actor Maggie Smith), Martin Scorsese (Chalamet), John Mulaney (Sarah Sherman) and Werner Herzog (James Austin Johnson), among others. Then Chalamet joined Mikey Day as one of two giant-biceped gym trainers answering a call from a customer (Heidi Gardner). The host played not-exactly-mainstream, “gay-famous” internet sensation Troye Sivan in a sketch with Sherman and Bowen Yang.
