Nate Bargatze Had to Fight to Get His Best-Ever ‘SNL’ Sketch Into the Show After It Bombed at the Table Read
When Nate Bargatze hosts Saturday Night Live, he leads the show to fulfill his vision of a new kind of sketch, one which, no matter how bad the table read goes, will still get nearly 20 million views on YouTube.
Back in October, stand-up star Bargatze returned to SNL less than a year after his first hosting stint on the show, landing him among historic company on the all-time record list of fastest re-books in 30 Rockefeller Plaza history. Bargatze’s deadpan Tennessee drawl and delightfully practical sense of humor has already made him an SNL A-lister after just two appearances, and, with America constantly coming up with the kind of mundane insanity that Bargatze uses as ammunition in his comedy, we can expect Bargatze to be a big part of the show’s near future as his best historic-fictional character envisions the destiny of our country.
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Bargatze’s biggest hit so far during his two SNL hosting stints has been his performances as George Washington dreaming up all the illogical eccentricities of modern American society during the Revolutionary War. But, as Bargatze revealed during a recent appearance on Good One: A Podcast About Jokes, the original “Washington’s Dream” nearly died in the Wednesday read-through.
According to Bargatze, “Washington’s Dream,” which SNL veterans Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell wrote for him during his first hosting stint in October 2023, was his favorite sketch on the board going into the show’s hellish production week. But, for SNL don Lorne Michaels, the sketch was firmly stuck in the “maybe” column going into the all-important Wednesday evening read-through. When “Washington's Dream” bombed at the round table, Bargatze faced the nightmare scenario of his favorite sketch dying before it even reached rehearsals.
However, Bargatze noted on the podcast, as a host, “You do have a lot more say than you think you do at SNL.” And, when Michaels asked him about his thoughts on “Washington’s Dream,” Bargatze stuck to his guns and got the scene added to the very end of the dress rehearsal where, thankfully, it absolutely killed.
The second time around, Bargatze didn’t need to fight to get “Washington's Dream 2” on the running order, but he did have some outside voices warning him against it. “I had a buddy that goes, ‘Do not do another one,’” Bargatze admitted of his second SNL hosting stint, though, like Washington himself, Bargatze refused to be deterred. “It’s not about what the jokes are. It’s just about the George Washington character. People just want to see that character come back.”
And come back Washington will. When asked about the future of the sketch, Bargatze foresaw more success for “Washington's Dream,” saying that the character will have more sketches “after the second one, yeah.” This all-but-confirms that “Washington’s Dream” will be a trilogy at the very least, seeing as President Washington hasn’t gotten a single prediction wrong so far — just ask Jeff and Geoff.
