Last fall, Saturday Night Live made an outside-the-box choice for its guest host: Adele. She wasn’t handling both hosting and musical guest duties, as some have in the past; instead, she was there solely to act. And the results were pretty good, including one hilariously bizarre sketch. The show has decided to make another outside-the-box choice for guest host, only this time it’s a little more baffling: Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will host the May 8 episode.
Now, Musk isn’t the only non-actor or non-comedian to host the show; plenty of politicians have done so in the past. CEOs, however, are a bit less common in the hosting ranks. Steve Forbes gave it a go in 1996, though he was running for president at the time — and the episode in question isn’t exactly beloved.
The announcement of Musk as host is head-spinning for a few reasons, including his penchant for saying controversial and sometimes illegal things. It’s also worth mentioning that Musk lent his voice to an episode of Rick and Morty in 2019, playing his parallel-universe counterpart Elon Tusk. Musk’s vocal stylings, however, are not terribly funny.
SNL‘s announcement has, however, given Twitter plenty to riff on.
How will Musk’s first stint as host go? (One prediction: musical guest Miley Cyrus — who has no small amount of experience acting on screen — will turn up in multiple sketches.) We’ll know more on May 8.
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