Here are this week's SNL promos featuring Taran Killam and first-time host Anna Kendrick. Killam and Kendrick jam-pack these four minutes with great concepts like monkey butlers, bacon bikinis, musicals, show tunes, and plenty of one-upmanship. Even though Kendrick doesn't seem to understand what SNL is, these promos hint that she's going to be great anyway.
Saturday Night Live cast member Taran Killam is taking his first steps into the comic world. The Illegitimates, the comic book series he's writing with Marc Andreyko, drops its first issue on Wednesday. The story follows the bastard children of a fallen James Bond-esque super spy who were the products of his one night stands and are now expected to form a new spy team together. Entertainment Weekly has a preview of the first issue up now.
NBC uploaded a cut sketch from this past weekend's episode of Saturday Night Live. Called "Don't Smash My Pumpkin," it's a music video starring Taran Killam as a guy who's really sad after some teenagers ruin his jack-o-lantern.
Miley Cyrus is hosting Saturday Night Live this weekend, with musical guest herself, and she and Taran Killam recorded some perfectly charming, self-deprecating promos for the show. She seems up for making a joke or two at her own expense, so the new writers and cast members should have plenty of material to work with.
Here's SNL's Taran Killam telling the story of his worst-ever live comedy experience for Worst I Ever Bombed, a new web series from Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Don't expect to see a Taran Killam stand-up tour anytime soon.
SNL's Taran Killam was a guest on last night's Late Night, and he and Meyers discussed everything from a failed Jebidiah Atkinson joke to being on a pirate ship with Bobby Moynihan at Comic Con to his cut New Jersey birds show sketch "Boids" with Vanessa Bayer, which Killam agreed to perform in the near future on Late Night's upcoming "Second Chance Theater" segment.
In case you hadn't noticed, there have been a lot more music stars on SNL lately. Not merely performing as musical guests or popping up in a sketch here or there, as we've seen on the show every week, but pop stars getting booked as host in addition to their musical guest gig. What was once a rare event with triple threats like Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake occasionally pulling double duty in the early 2000s (and once by Paul Simon in 1976) has now become a fairly common practice. The last three seasons have seen hosts + musical guests Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Justin Timberlake, Justin Bieber, Bruno [...]
For people who like to talk about comedy, there are few greater debates than the one over the claim that "funny is funny." Can a performer or joke be objectively funny independent of context or medium? There are those who argue yes, that some comedians are so talented that their popularity is universal — Robin Williams, say, or Bill Murray — and that every culture since the dawn of man has had some version of a fart joke. Then there are those who argue no, that there are "different kinds of funny." Comedian Bill Burr made waves for his rant about "alternative comedy," which he criticized as being [...]
Season 39 of SNL kicks off this Saturday night with Tina Fey, Arcade Fire, and a mouthful of new names for Don Pardo to read off in the opening credits. After several seasons of little turnover, the cast is experiencing a major upheaval, with six — six! — new cast members to replace the departed Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis, and Fred Armisen. This is the largest staff hire in 18 years, tying the 1995-1996 season's addition of Jim Breuer, Will Ferrell, Darrell Hammond, David Koechner, Cheri Oteri, and Nancy Walls. After the show's dismal 1994-1995 season, which saw near cancellation and the firing/resignation of 12 cast members, those six were [...]
Here's SNL's Taran Killam on Jimmy Fallon Friday night, talking about the time he avoided Michael Cera at a party because he didn't want to talk to Cera about the impression of him he did on the show. Also, you get to see Killam play a popstar from a decade-old movie clip Fallon dug up, making this an interview that's well-rounded in the different ways it embarrasses Killam.
We've reached the midpoint of SNL's 39th season — one that has optimistically been called a "transitional year," but one more commonly known as "the year the shit hit the fan with that whole black woman issue." Despite the fact that the bulk of the SNL coverage in fall 2013 has zeroed in on the show's diversity controversy, SNL has given us plenty of other things to talk about, from new cast members and emerging stars on the show, to surprise cameos and celebrity hosts who defied our expectations — in good and bad ways.
Unfortunately, few of those topics have gotten much ink in fall 2013 (outside of sites [...]
Kerry Washington is hosting Saturday Night Live this weekend with Eminem, and since SNL's hosts this year seem to be chosen largely based on the cast members' crushes, this week it was Taran Killam's turn to not-so-subtly share his feelings. And also, to rap.
After Justin Bieber hosted SNL last season, I concluded that SNL will never quite be the alternative comedy show we'd like it to be. There's no denying the show would be much funnier if producers only booked the heroes of comedy nerds to host the show, as it did last season with Louis CK and last week with Tina Fey. I've made the case several times that the show would be far better if only former cast members hosted — indeed, SNL has enough star alumni to fill a few seasons' worth of episodes.
But SNL isn't that show. The ongoing inclusion of performances by a musical guest [...]
As mentioned in yesterday's post listing our favorite moments from this season of SNL, Season 38 has been dubbed a "transitional year" by many followers of the show. After a few years of relative stability among the core cast members, stars Kristen Wiig and Andy Samberg left a year ago, followed by Abby Elliott later in the summer. With the start of the new season, three performers from Chicago's improv and sketch community joined the cast: Aidy Bryant, Tim Robinson, and Cecily Strong. In the wake of Wiig's dominating presence on the show, two freshman females in particular have emerged as go-to's: Kate McKinnon, who joined the cast [...]
