When Sky announced that it was bringing the legendary US sketch show Saturday Night Live to the UK, the public had questions. Would it be British enough? Edgy enough? Cooler than its American cousin?
The answer was emphatically delivered in week one when the cast performed a Hamnet parody, in which William Shakespeare returned to his family from London on a Lime scooter with a mild ketamine addiction and a “c***y little earring”. It was deeply British, a touch provocative, and extremely funny.
To get the sketch into the show, the cast had to talk to Sky and “have almost like a board meeting in the hallway about getting ‘c***y’ in, and the meaning of that”, says Jack Shep, who played a Brat-ified version of the bard. He had to explain how the word had become positive slang in Gen Z culture. “It was awesome. We were like, ‘It’s different now!’ That was week one, so that tells you everything you need to know.”
open image in gallerySince then, the sketch show has continued to venture near the knuckle when searching for the nation’s funny bone – from skewering former prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor over his Jeffrey Epstein links to the Muppet-esque portrayal of Keir Starmer – and it’s worked. SNL UK received a warm – and relieved – reception from viewers and critics alike after its first run, while its sketches have been watched over 54 million times on YouTube since it premiered in March. National treasures Louis Theroux and Martin Lewis even made cameos as themselves in various skits.
Tonight, the show is back for more, just four months after the first series came to an end. No one is more surprised than its cast of rising stars – many of whom had been warned that attempting to bring the live sketch show to a hard-to-please, ever sceptical Britain would be a disaster. “We have been spoken to by pretty much everyone in the industry who told us why it was gonna be bad,” says Paddy Young, who co-hosts the Weekend Update segment. “A poisoned chalice, that’s what I got told. But it makes me feel very patriotic. How else would this country respond to something that’s high risk like this? Of course, we’re just going to say it’s going to be bad.”
open image in gallery“People were like, ‘I think it was… good?’” Shep says of SNL UK’s first show. “It’s like we were waiting to hear a gunshot but we haven’t heard one. It’s been really nice. We obviously had supporters from early on, but I think everyone was very sceptical.”
Sitting across from the cast in a London hotel while they’re in junket mode, it’s clear to see that the doubters never needed to worry. Watching them fire jokes back and forth between one another feels like securing front-row tickets to the Wimbledon of comedy, with their electric rapport leaving me with mild whiplash (or rather, quiplash).
Surely those comedy sceptics must be eating their words? “A lot of them are dead,” Shep jokes, with Young quickly adding: “Yeah. Coincidence?”
Even fellow cast member Emma Sidi wasn’t sure the format would work in the UK until the first show aired. “I couldn’t see the laughter working in the room as well as it does,” she admits. “I think that’s only because we haven’t had a big comedy show with a live studio audience be successful in the UK for such a long time. I had a disconnect of even imagining a room full of British people laughing. In my head, it was either a dated thing or an American thing – but then we were like, it can work.”
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open image in galleryAfter 16 weeks off – during which the show’s stars and its extensive team of writers have been performing at the Edinburgh Fringe, cramming in holidays and rearranging tour dates – they’re all ready to return. Although given sketches are pitched on a week-by-week basis for each Saturday’s particular celebrity host, there’s not much they could do to prepare over the summer.
“It’s hard to prep material in advance,” says star Celeste Dring, who spent the time off hiring an accountant and moving flats. “You need to be around everyone and you need some feedback on what’s working, what’s not working.”
Young, who teases that he may or may not be reprising the role of now-prime minister Andy Burnham (although he may have to shave that impressive ’tache), admits that “a smart person” would have brushed up his impressions ahead of series two, but he didn’t. Instead, he’s been recovering after slicing open his finger with a samurai sword – which actually sounds like a great idea for a sketch.
“I’m in physio and I can only do that,” he says, while trying to bend the injured finger. “It builds character. The thing with hands is they’re overrated. Once you lose one, you think, ‘God, I don’t need that for anything. I don’t want to open a bottle of Pepsi…or Coke or Dr Pepper.” Briefly dropping into an eerily accurate impersonation of US president Donald Trump, he adds: “‘We love the lilt!’ I have been practising a few impressions, I guess. That’s Angela Rayner by the way.”
open image in galleryMeanwhile, Sidi spent the time off getting to know her baby son, who she welcomed last year with husband and SNL UK writer Al Roberts. “I wasn’t really able to do that during the last series,” she says. “I saw him learn to walk and I was a bit nervous that I’d be busy doing the show while he did that, but he did it in front of me so that’s great.”
The comedy couple will be doing the “crazy juggle” between work and parenting once again when they return to what Sidi describes as “Hogwarts for comedy”, but it does mean that they get to spend some quality time together. “This is a really weird way of dating,” she giggles. “We’re at work together, talking about comedy, without a baby.”
A typical week at SNL UK isn’t for the faint of heart; the cast and writers pitch sketches on a Monday, then plan sets, costumes and scripts all week before performing what can often be a completely different version of the skit on Saturday night. They get the Sunday off before starting all over again with new ideas for another celebrity host on Monday.
The cast are still getting used to watching their jokes, some of which they’ve been developing and working on all week, be savagely cut after Saturday afternoon’s dress rehearsal. “The second a sketch gets cut, you go, ‘I’m devastated.’ But then you go, ‘I know why – it wasn’t good enough’,” Sidi says. “It’s like doing your driving test every week and failing every week and rebooking every week. That’s what it feels like doing SNL. It is really fun, but it is brutal. There’s no two ways about it. But you just need to rebook that driving test – don’t give up. You will learn to drive.”
It’s the same for the show’s Weekend Update segment, where Young and co-anchor Ania Magliano deliver quickfire jokes about the week’s biggest news stories. “When you’re churning out ideas and most of them just by their very nature don’t work, that is such a weird thing,” Young says. “A show might go well on Saturday and then you have one day off and on Monday, you’re back to being crap all over again. It’s really humbling.”
While the likes of Tina Fey, Jamie Dornan, Hannah Waddingham and Ncuti Gatwa were the first celebrity hosts to take a chance on SNL’s British cousin, Jurassic Park star Jeff Goldblum is kicking off series two tonight with CMAT as his musical guest. Despite just how physically and mentally tiring making the show can be, its cast – which recently welcomed comedian and Such Brave Girls star Freddie Meredith into their ranks – can’t wait to return for their sophomore year and the sketch madness that’ll come with it.
For Young, it’s all worth it for the curtain call at the end of each live show, where the celebrity host and full cast take to the stage as the credits start to roll. “When we’re all waiting to go on for the bow and normally we’re all wearing whatever the last costume is, that’s always pretty sweet,” he says. “It’s just surreal to see Louis Theroux standing next to some Beefeaters. You see that and you think, ‘That’s why I got into this game’.”
‘Saturday Night Live UK’ returns tonight at 10pm on Sky One