NBC has announced that the 51st season of “Saturday Night Live” will hit the airwaves (and Peacock, too!) October 4, a date that is still nearly two months into the future. Meanwhile, its been about three months since “SNL” has graced us with a new set of hilarious(-to-mid) sketches, and last season was one of the series’ most eventful, since it was the 50th lap for the pop culture staple. During its half-centennial run, there was even a movie — about but unaffiliated to the series — about the making of its first episode.
The whole 50th ballyhoo led up to an all-star three-plus hour anniversary show that premiered Sunday (naturally), February 16. The audience was like an Oscar or Emmy night roster: Cher, Robert De Niro, Alec Baldwin, Scarlett Johansson, Zach Galifianakis, Jack Nicholson, Ayo Edebiri, Steve Martin, and Emma Stone, among many more. Meryl Streep appeared in her very first “SNL” sketch, for heaven’s sake. Former cast legends like Adam Sandler, Tina Fey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tracy Morgan, Kristin Wiig… there could be an entire article just citing the names that made up the 50th, and how that all went down. Oh wait, we had one of those, right here.
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One star, however, that did not enjoy the evening was former cast member Pete Davidson, who told Seth Meyers that the anniversary audience was “terrible.”
“It’s a terrible audience ’cause it’s just famous people, and famous people only like themselves,” Davidson said, admitting his own culpability. “It’s true! I’m guilty of this,” he said.
One big name, however, did live up to the hype for Davidson, and it was the Oscar-winner he happened to be seated right beside.
“Meryl rules,” he said. “In typical ‘SNL’ fashion, they don’t tell you anything. You don’t even know what’s going on. I get to my seat and I just look and I’m like, ‘This can’t be right.’ And it was Meryl Streep, and I just sat down and I was like like, ‘I’m so sorry… I’m so sorry that I’m sitting next to you. You’re the best.’ And she was very nice.”
Davidson is currently starring in “The Home,” which hit theaters on July 25. The film’s director, James DeMonaco, told IndieWire that Davidson has a depth that “SNL” viewers may not fully recognize.
“I don’t want to say his public persona is so different from who he really is, but people know him as this really funny guy, and I know him more as a soulful person who experienced a lot of tragedy early in his life,” DeMonaco said. Davison lost his father, a firefighter, during the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. “I think he related to [his ‘The Home’ character] Max in a way, because they both experienced trauma in their youth.”
Davidson, in addition to having a film currently in theaters, was recently a voice in the animated “Dog Man,” a part of the “Riff Raff” ensemble, and just premiered “The Pickup” on Amazon Prime. Of “The Pickup,” he said, “The movie we did– It’s a tough one because it’s an indie, so there’s no budget and there’s not anything glamorous about it… No one makes money, no one’s comfortable, it’s strictly like for the art.”
