Elon Musk to host SNL

Variety

Saturday Night Live announced that Musk, the billionaire mogul behind Tesla and SpaceX, is scheduled to make his hosting debut on the May 8 episode with musical guest Miley Cyrus. The news comes one day after Musk's SpaceX launched its Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station. Musk, whom Forbes ranks as the second-richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $151 billion, is the rare business mogul to host SNL. New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner hosted SNL in 1990, while then-NBC programming president Brandon Tartikoff hosted in 1983. Business mogul Donald Trump was starring on The Apprentice when he first hosted SNL in 2004. "At first, Musk seems like a left-field choice for a sketch comedy show," says Bruce Haring. "But the man behind Tesla and Space X has shown a quick wit in his online dealings with fans, foes and the like, so may have a few more surprises in store. The only surprise was that girlfriend and recording artist Grimes, the mother of his son X Æ A-12, is not on board as a music guest." The Musk news quickly got Lorne Michaels' name trending on Twitter, with some comparing giving the controversial Musk the SNL platform with Trump hosting in 2015 when he was a presidential candidate. "Looking forward to revisiting this great moment in personal branding when this half wit scam artist runs for president one day!" tweeted BoJack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg. Cyrus, meanwhile, returns as musical guest a year after performing in one of the SNL At Home episodes. This will be her sixth time as musical guest. SNL's announcement also likely means that Season 46 will have 20 episodes. From 2008 to 2019, SNL produced 21 to 22 episodes per season. Musk hosts Episode 18 on May 8, followed by an episode on May 15 and the season finale on May 22, the final Saturday of the 2020-21 TV season.

ALSO:

• It’s impossible not to see a Saturday Night Live guest host pick as an endorsement: "It’s part of what made the show’s decision to run with Donald Trump as its frontman back in 2015 so upsetting, and such a nadir for the series as a whole: At the bare minimum, the selection implies that someone high up in the show’s apparatus believes that this is what you, the viewer, want," says William Hughes. "This person is someone you’re comfortable spending 93 minutes of your Saturday night with, watching them be humanized by adjacency to comedy (if not by actually being funny themselves). To some extent, it’s a willingness to give the show over to that person’s worldview, no matter what the writers and the cast (who’ve been vocal in recent years about how much they hated the Trump appearance) might feel. If nothing else, it’s a massive platform, access to a cultural touchstone, and free rein on a widely watched TV series, no matter how much it might get complained about these days. Anyway: Elon Musk is hosting SNL. That’s right! Musk—best known in comedy circles for circulating Twitter memes scraped off the barrel-bottom of Reddit, and for more-or-less failing to launch his satire site Thud, despite pouring reported millions of dollars into it—is set to take the stage of Studio 8H on May 8."
• Read some of the negative Twitter reactions to Elon Musk hosting SNL
• Read even more of the negative reactions
• UPDATE: Elon Musk tweets of hosting SNL: "Let’s find out just how live Saturday Night Live really is"