5 ‘SNL’ Hosts Who Got the Job Mainly Because They Were Hot
Despite a long track record of so-so shows, Lorne Michaels just can’t seem to help himself. Once or twice a season, he chooses a Saturday Night Live host not because they’re funny or because they’re famous but because they’re insanely attractive. Hey, I like ogling good-looking people as much as the next guy, but these five examples prove that Saturday Night Live would be better off leaving the sexy show trope behind.
Raquel Welch
Welch’s acting resume is short on laugh-out-loud hits, but it’s clear that comedy wasn’t the reason she was asked to host during SNL’s first season. According to Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live, she spent the week turning down sketches like Al Franken’s “Planet of the Enormous Hooters.” (With the Not Ready for Time Players outfitted with gigantic fake boobs, Welch would have been an outcast on her planet thanks to her tiny bosom.)
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At least Michaels had the good sense to veto Chevy Chase’s idea to have the camera drift down to Welch’s cleavage every time she appeared on stage. It’s telling that SNL’s official YouTube channel doesn’t have a single clip from Welch’s tepid episode.
Jacob Elordi
When Elordi hosted last January, the show devoted no less than four sketches to the concept of “Jacob Elordi is hot.” If any of them were funny, I wouldn’t have minded. Instead, we got bits like this one in which the women in an AA meeting volunteer to fall off the wagon if boring Elordi promises to give them “the dicking of a lifetime.” It’s funnier than it sounds.
Kim Kardashian
Kardashian has only three possible qualifications for hosting SNL — she starred on a popular reality show, she got famous making amateur porn and she’s hot. Notice that “She’s a laff riot!” isn’t on the list.
Hollywood Reporter said her Aladdin sketch with Pete Davidson “leaned heavily on unimaginative sex jokes,” but at least she got a few months of tabloid headlines out of her SNL romance with Davidson. That’s got to be why she took the job in the first place, right?
Jason Momoa
For some inexplicable reason, the comedy-impaired Momoa has hosted the show twice. Actually, the reasons are very explicable — he had two Aquaman movies to promote.
Even though Momoa is the alleged heartthrob who makes SNL viewers want to see some skin, Vulture noted that “the crowd cheers louder when (Andrew) Dismukes takes his shirt off in the ‘Castaway’ sketch than when Momoa takes his off.”
Hey Lorne, isn’t that a sign that we’re doing this wrong?
Katy Perry
At least Perry is a good sport, bouncing up and down because she knows exactly why SNL has her appearing on Bronx Beat alongside Maya Rudolph and Amy Poehler. Perry plays a prodigiously blossoming 16-year-old (really?) who’s bursting out of a Sesame Street T-shirt that’s practically split to her navel.
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“It looks like today’s show is brought to us by the number 38 and the letter double-D,” says Poehler. On second thought, “Double-D? More like 3-D.”
