Aimee Lou Wood was this week’s SNL UK host and was quick to mention two of her best-known shows. “You might know me from Sex Education, the show that took the shame out of getting freaky,” she said. “Or, perhaps you know me from The White Lotus, the show where a guy wanks off his brother and puts the shame right back in there.”
She also riffed on an infamous viral clip of Kim Cattrall scat singing in her monologue and, continuing the music theme, appeared in an ’80s-style pop video as a singer with terrible hand-eye coordination. British singer-songwriter MEEK was this week’s real musical guest on the UK adaptation of the NBC sketch show, which airs on Sky One and streaming service NOW TV.
The Weekend Update section of the show was quick to cover the incident at last week’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner. “For all those in attendance it was an undeniably terrifying event,” co-host Ania Magliano said. “President Trump shat himself. Minutes later the shots rang out.”
The latest episode of the show opened with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer hijacking the royal plane as it transported King Charles and Queen Camilla back from their royal visit to the U.S. Under-pressure PM Starmer has realized he cannot be removed if the plane stays in the air. “What other choice did I have, do a good job?” he asks the King and Queen.
Before Starmer turned up, the King and Queen had been congratulating themselves on a successful royal visit to the U.S. “There’s no way Donald Trump will do anything weird or bad ever again,” Camilla says to Charles, while also admitting to smuggling weed gummies home – in her stomach.
Elsewhere, SNL took aim at sci-fi series Doctor Who, with series regular Hammed Animashaun playing the Doctor and Wood as his assistant. “What is this place, Doctor,” Wood says as she emerges from the Tardis and is faced with a grotesque monster. “It looks like my HPV flare-up,” she says. Wood also appeared as the Nintendo character Princess Peach opposite Mario in a Mario Bros. skit.
The White Lotus star has history with SNL. She previously described a sketch on the U.S. SNL about her, which had Sarah Sherman in a pair of buck teeth, as “mean and unfunny.” Getting ahead of the story before her turn as host tonight, Wood did a timely promo video earlier this week, per our report at the time.
The UK adaptation of the NBC sketch show has been generating a lot of noise on social, while the TV viewing numbers started strong by Sky standards, but have slipped since the show’s premiere. The social impact is good news for Sky, which does not put all sketches from the show online – as a pay TV operator, a key consideration is getting people to sign up to its service, so some of the SNL content remains for Sky and Now TV subs only.
Wood joined a roster of SNL UK hosts including Tina Fey and Nicola Coughlan and the likes of Jimmy Fallon and Graham Norton have popped up in sketches. Sky has unveiled the hosts for the upcoming final two episodes of this first season in the shape of Ted Lasso star Hannah Waddingham and Doctor Who‘s Ncuti Gatwa.
SNL UK was initially slated to run for six episodes but Sky extended its run to eight instalments.
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