5 ‘SNL’ Hosts Who Were Their Own Musical Guests
Don’t be too dazzled when host Timothée Chalamet double-dips as his own musical guest on Saturday Night Live later this month. Sure, it’s impressive, but not that unusual — he’ll be the 49th host to pull off the feat. But most of those hosts, from Mick Jagger to Dolly Parton to Charli XCX, were musicians first who muddled their way through a few comedy sketches. Chalamet is one of the rare SNL hosts to attempt the reverse.
Here are five performers not known primarily for music who nonetheless rocked the house on SNL…
Lily Tomlin
Well, here’s a weird one. When Tomlin showed up in Season Eight for her third hosting gig, the musical guest was Black R&B singer Pervis Hawkins — a Tomlin character in full beard. The songs have been scrubbed from the Peacock episode, and there are no clips on YouTube, presumably because Tomlin performed the character in blackface. (If you want to see Tomlin performing as the Luther Vandross wannabe, check out the 15:52 mark of her 1982 comedy special, Lily for President.) Maybe we shouldn’t give Peacock too much credit for sensitivity — it included Gary Kroger in blackface in the show’s opening sketch. Sheesh.
Gary Busey
Fresh off his Oscar-nominated turn in The Buddy Holly Story, Busey picked up his guitar again for a musical number and a rockabilly sketch when he hosted in 1979. Behind him are two things you rarely see — Paul Shaffer slapping the bass and Paul Shaffer with hair. SNL legend has it that John Belushi got Busey wasted the night before the show, according to Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live. The crew couldn’t find the hungover actor until about 90 seconds before air because he was looking for a Coca-Cola.
Deion Sanders
Sanders was neither a funny actor nor a musician but that didn’t stop him from doing All The Things when he hosted in 1995. How did Coach Prime do? Entertainment Weekly wasn’t impressed, noting that Sanders “capped off an evening of excruciating comedy by performing two terrible tracks from his terrible 1994 rap album Prime Time.”
Jennifer Lopez
Sure, Lopez has put out plenty of albums but is it fair to say she’s an actor first, a dancer second and a singer a distant third? That hasn’t stopped JLo from pulling SNL double-duty twice, a prima donna move even if she can’t quite out-diva Mango. Chris Kattan says it wasn’t easy writing for the star in oral history Live from New York: “When Jennifer Lopez was here, it’s like, ‘Oh well, we’ve got to hit these jokes and those jokes,’ and then it turns out she doesn’t want to make those jokes, so then how can we do it subliminally?”
Donald Glover
Glover completed his hilarious run on Community before he took on his Childish Gambino persona, a music act he brought with him to Saturday Night Live. While the Grammy-winning hip-hop career was one hell of a side hustle, Glover recently told New York Times he was retiring Childish Gambino to once again focus on his film and TV career. So stop blaming him for holding up the Community movie.