Matt Damon and Jason Momoa will be hosting episodes of Saturday Night Live this season. The sketch comedy program is currently in season 44, featuring cast members like Kate McKinnon, Beck Bennett, Michael Che, Pete Davidson, Cecily Strong, Kenan Thompson, and Leslie Jones. Much like every season of SNL, season 44 has already had some memorable hosts and musical guests.
The new season started off with Star Wars star Adam Driver hosting and Kanye West being the musical guest. The episode received mixed reviews and also a lot of controversy, given West’s unaired Pro-Trump speech after the episode. Other hosts this season have included Awkwafina, Seth Meyers, Jonah Hill, and Liev Schrieber. The most recent episode of SNL was the Thanksgiving episode, and brought back Steve Carell for the fourth time, where he joked about a reboot of The Office. Now going into December and the second half of the season, it looks like two more big name actors will get a shot at hosting SNL.
EW reports that Momoa and Damon have been confirmed to be hosting upcoming episodes of the show. Momoa will host the December 8 episode of SNL, which will mark his first appearance on the venerable comedy show. Damon will then host the following week, on December 15. This will be Damon’s second time hosting the show, but he previously appeared this season as Brett Kavanaugh for the season premiere. It was also revealed that Mumford & Sons will be the musical guest for Momoa, with Mark Ronson and Miley Cyrus performing during Damon’s episode.
Reviews for this season of SNL have been fairly mixed, which may or may not be caused by the massive amount of political content present in the show. Jones previously hoped season 44 wouldn’t rely as much on politics, but so far that hasn’t happened. Every episode so far has started with a political cold open, featuring several impersonations of political figures, such as the aforementioned Kavanaugh and Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump.
Going forward, the series could be hoping to boost ratings by bringing in bigger stars such as Momoa and Damon. Momoa is known for his short, but important role in HBO’s Game of Thrones. Since then the actor has joined the DC film universe as Arthur Curry, a.k.a. Aquaman, and will be starring in the solo movie Aquaman this December. As for Damon, he has recently appeared in cameo roles in Deadpool 2 and Thor: Ragnarok, while starring in the film Suburbicon in 2017. While the reviews for SNL aren’t guaranteed to get better with these two actors hosting, viewership will likely go up given their popularity. Saturday Night Live returns on December 1 with The Crown’s Claire Foy hosting.
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Source: EW
