The 5 Most Obscure People to Host ‘SNL’s Weekend Update
“I’m Chevy Chase, and you’re not” was a cute catchphrase to launch Weekend Update on an unsuspecting nation, but it also turned out to be prophetic. While the fake news desk made stars of comedians like Dennis Miller and Norm Macdonald, it has also been anchored by performers who, for lack of a better term, are no Chevy Chase. And so, no one would blame you if you can’t remember a single joke from these five obscure Weekend Update anchors.
Gail Matthius
Charles Rocket was the main Weekend Update anchor for Season Six, but halfway through, the show introduced Matthius as his co-anchor. Why?
“We need a woman out there!” Matthius guessed with a shrug during a Vulture interview. “It wasn’t like I insisted.”
While the gig didn’t make Matthius a star, she was an eye-witness to Eddie Murphy taking over the show. “I have a very clear memory of doing Weekend Update, and up he slides and does his basketball thing,” she explained. “I was looking over and heard the response from the live audience. I went, ‘Oh, yeah, some shit just happened here. He’s on his way.’ It was astounding because he had such confidence. … I’d seen people kill, and he killed it. It was definitely a moment.”
George McGovern
Season Nine was strange for several reasons: The presence of Jim Belushi, changing the name of Weekend Update to “Saturday Night News” and the unusual practice of occasionally asking SNL’s guest host to anchor the news.
George McGovern, the Democratic candidate for president who lost in a landslide to Richard Nixon in 1972, was an out-of-left-field choice to host in the first place — it would be like Mitt Romney headlining SNL in 2024. Unsurprisingly, McGovern fumbled nearly every joke, reading off the teleprompter in a stammering, stumbling monotone. Out of all the show’s political guests, Entertainment Weekly ranked McGovern’s “laugh-free” appearance dead last.
Christine Ebersole
Weekend Update got another name change in Season Seven, this time rechristened “SNL Newsbreak.” The floundering segment went through several host changes throughout the season, with anchor Brian Doyle-Murray getting a co-anchor in Christine Ebersole midway through the year. As you can see in this clip, both were microphone-challenged.
“I didn’t think that what I did on Newsbreak was anything special at all,” she told the SNL Stories podcast, and the powers that be must have agreed: Ebersole only got five episodes to co-anchor before being handed the pink slip.
Edwin Newman
If you’re old enough to have watched the first season of Saturday Night Live, you’re old enough to remember Edwin Newman, an NBC News journalist for 23 years. Like George McGovern, he was part of that odd experiment to have the show’s host also anchor the joke news.
Unlike McGovern, however, he returned to helm Weekend Update on two subsequent episodes with hosts Billy Crystal (Season Nine) and Michael McKean (Season 10). In the latter, he said that as the moderator of the Reagan/Mondale debate, he couldn’t joke about the candidates because “I want to continue the nonpartisan role I had in that.” It’s unclear whether or not he was serious.
Horatio Sanz
Sanz isn’t obscure to SNL fans, but even die-hards probably don’t remember his brief stint as Weekend Update anchor.
But there he was at the beginning of Season 31 in his journalist eyeglasses, filling in for Tina Fey who was on maternity leave. The substitution only lasted two episodes as Fey got a load of Sanz cracking up on the Update desk and hurried back for the season’s third show.