Latest news with #CecilyStrong
Daily Mail
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
MAGA erupts in fury at SNL cast for deeply personal stab at Pete Hegseth: 'This is disgraceful'
MAGA supporters have erupted in fury over Saturday Night Live 's latest political sketch featuring a deeply personal dig at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The controversial segment, which aired this weekend, featured former cast member Cecily Strong returning as Judge Jeanine Pirro alongside Colin Jost portraying Hegseth as her 'drinking buddy.' In the sketch, Strong repeatedly made light of alleged alcohol issues that the real-life Defense Secretary has vehemently denied. 'I love Pete Hegseth. He's my old drinking buddy,' Strong's Pirro said. When Jost then entered the scene as Hegseth, Pirro was so surprised that she sprayed wine all over his face. 'Hey, Pete, you're not drinking again, are you?' Johnson's Trump asked. 'No, absolutely not, sir,' Hegseth replied. 'I promised I would never have a bottle touch my lips, but I do have some news to share. Before I do, Jeanine, you want to take a swig of this?' Pirro then spat her drinks in his face again - and he eagerly opened his mouth to catch some of the alcoholic spray. 'Anyway,' Hegseth continued. 'I accidentally added Kim Jong Un to the group chat.' 'Oh yeah, that's the stuff,' Hegseth jokes, as Trump calls the pair the 'AA team.' The sketch sparked fury on social media with users slamming the show with angry reactions. Many supporters of President Trump called the 'comedy' 'disgraceful' and 'anti-American.' 'This is what despicable disgraceful anti American TV PROPAGANDA looks like,' wrote one particularly incensed viewer on X. 'They attempt to portray @JudgeJeanine & Sec. Def as drinkers to regurgitate old slander points. Is this what you want your kids growing up watching?' 'Is this what you want your kids growing up watching? When we grew up with SNL it was funny,' the furious user continued. One user questioned: 'How much longer will they be able to do s*** like this?' Another commented: 'It's not funny. The political bias and one sided comedy is just pathetic and sad.' Critics called out the sketch not just for its offensive content but also for Jost's 'poor portrayal' of Hegseth. 'SNL does poor preparation for their skits and this shows. They have Hegseth all wrong,' one user criticized. They clearly have never watched a clip of him talking. He acts like Christopher Moltisanti from the Sopranos not some prep school kid.' 'SNL has no one that can do a decent Hegseth impersonation,' another wrote. The SNL cold open came after President Donald Trump this week announced that he was appointing the 73-year-old former judge the next United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. Pirro will replace Trump's interim appointment Ed Martin. The NBC show mocked the new appointment, by bringing back a Merlot-sipping Strong to star as the judge. 'I am so proud to be part of this group full of Russian assets, booze hounds and people famous for the little baby animals they've killed,' she said, thanking the president - played by James Austin Johnson - for adding her to the administration. Johnson's Trump then shared his own praise of Pirro. 'Oh we love Jeanine. She's a great legal mind and she ahs the most important quality I look for in a lawyer: She's on TV. She's on The Five, which is a show kind of like The View,' he jokes. At that point, Cecily's Pirro interjects that she's 'a Whoopi,' which Johnson's Trump agreed with - saying she was also 'very tough.' 'Yes, especially on immigration,' the fake Pirro agreed. 'I don't have any reservations about sending things back. 'My friends know I've sent back every salad I've ever ordered at a restaurant,' she added - leading Trump to say he 'wouldn't know' as he has 'never' eaten a salad. This isn't the first time SNL took a dig at Hegseth's drinking habits. In March, critics slammed the show for insinuating that he drinks on the job, as they made fun of the Trump Administration's top secret war plans texting blunder. SNL opened the show with a group chat skit teasing Donald Trump's national security team for adding an editor from the Atlantic to a military group chat. The White House faced fierce backlash last week when the Atlantic's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg revealed he was added to a Signal app group with Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other officials. Vance, played by Bowen Yang, then entered the chat, and they started to joke that Hegseth was drinking on the job. 'Well, I'm going to be bad and make myself a jack and coke to celebrate, just the one though,' Dismukes said. 'Nice, you promised to stop drinking when you got the job, but it's like they say in AA, just the one is okay,' Bowen said. During his confirmation hearing, Hegseth pledged that he wouldn't drink at all in his position as the Pentagon's chief after past allegations he was drunk on the job numerous times on Fox News.
The Guardian
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Saturday Night Live: Walton Goggins is a game host with underwhelming material
This week's Saturday Night Live starts off the same as the last several Mother's Day episodes have, with members of the cast – Bowen Yang, Marcello Hernández, and Kenan Thompson – standing front and center with their mothers. Mercifully, we're spared their treacly tribute when Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson) barges on stage and kicks them to the curb, proclaiming, 'It's me again, invading all aspects of your life.' Trump rambles about Pope Leo ('We hope he does what we want … otherwise I'll have to send JD back to do his thing'), trade deals ('Question: can a country go out of business? We're gonna find out'), and his newly appointed US attorney for Washington DC, Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro. This brings out the ever-sloshed Pirro (Cecily Strong, reprising her popular impersonation), who is proud to be joining 'this group full of Russian assets, boozehounds, and people famous for the little baby animals they killed'. She's eventually joined by fellow member of Trump's 'AA team', secretary of defense Pete Hegseth (Colin Jost). Jost doesn't even attempt to impersonate Hegseth, instead coming out just so his one-time Update co-host can spew wine (and bourbon) in his face. It's good to see Strong back, doing what she does best. Walton Goggins hosts for the first time. The character actor is having his moment thanks to his recent brooding turn on The White Lotus. Goggins admits that he was initially stoked to become a sex symbol at 53 years of age, until he googled himself and read some of the headlines: 'Hollywood's Newest Heartthrob Is a Greasy, Depressing Little Man Whom No One Saw Coming'. Pivoting to heartfelt sincerity, Goggins dedicates the rest of his noticeably short monologue to his mother, who he pulls from the front row to share a dance with on stage. In proper Alabaman style, they cut short their waltz and start barn dancing. We travel back in time to Philadelphia, 1789, as the original Congress finalizes the first amendment to the constitution. After settling that, they move on to the next most important right, per Goggins's shady stranger Matt: 'Guns.' There's no one better at playing eccentric sleazebags than Goggins and he's cooking with gas here, but unfortunately the sketch ends before it ever gets going. On a trip to the Central Park Zoo, Jane Wickline finds a single baby shoe on the ground, which leads her on a musical quest to find the tot who lost it. It turns out to belong not to a baby, buts Goggins' tiny-footed weirdo. He expects a new romance, only to be coldly shot down. His White Lotus co-star and real-life bud Sam Rockwell pops in as an eavesdropping balloon animal vendor. It would have been nice to see more of him and Goggins together. Next, Goggins's sassy waiter Alvie cuts in on a Mother's Day brunch between two older women and their adult sons. His playful flirting quickly crosses the line to outright sexual advances, much to the mothers' delight and their sons' disgust. Goggins gets some good lines – 'Just 'cause your momma baked you doesn't mean other men don't want to see the oven', 'Calm down, boy; you got to spend nine months inside your momma, I'm just trying to get 20 minutes' – but as with the earlier Congress sketch it ends too abruptly. A preview of a new stage show has some surprise members in the audience: 20 (real) dogs who, as part of their service animal training, must sit through a full-length play. Within the first few moments of the incestuous, Tennessee Williams-esque drama, the dogs start bailing. Their trainer explains: 'This is their first time seeing a bad play.' The mix of cute canines and purposefully bad special effects brook laughs from the live audience, but like storebought dog bones, there's no meat here. Musical guests Arcade Fire perform their first set of the night, then it's on to Weekend Update, where Jost reports on the new American Pope: 'Conservatives are already complaining that this Pope is too woke … the reality is, there are no woke Catholics. If you're a woke Catholic, you're just not Catholic anymore.' A little later, Michael Che earns groans for his own take on the papacy: 'President Trump says Catholics loved an image he posted of him dressed as the Pope last week, but I just find it hard to believe anyone in the Catholic church would be into anything so juvenile.' The first update guest is Hernández's Movie Guy, an excitable usher who hasn't seen any of the big new releases, although he's happy to share his opinions on pop culture figures like 'Carly So Handsome' (Scarlett Johansson) and 'Gary Fields' (Garfield). There's no throughline here, it's just an excuse for Hernández to do his usual accent work. Then, Jost brings on A Guy Who Just Walked into a Spiderweb (Mikey Day). Ostensibly there to discuss the Trump tariffs, he instantly freaks out and starts flailing around while ripping his clothes off. Day really commits to the pratfalls, flinging his body around with reckless abandon. Very simple and very stupid in a good way. At The Deathly Diner, a spooky themed restraint at an amusement park, a vacationing family are disappointed by how sloppy and poorly thought out the experience is. This is true of the sketch itself, one of the worst of the season. Arcade Fire perform their second song before the show wraps up with a Dan Bulla short about a young executive (Andrew Dismukes) being made partner in his firm over drinks at his boss's luxury apartment. His excitement turns to horror when he uses the restroom and discovers a squatty potty, which leads to hallucinations of his associates struggling on the toilet. Things turn downright prehistorical by the end. As in previous Bulla shorts, the animation is impressive but that special something that Saturday TV Funhouse and Lonely Island segments had is missing. Thus ends the penultimate episode of Saturday Night Live's 50th season. Goggins made for a good enough host, uber charismatic and naturally funny as he is, but the show could have and should have given him more to work with. Hopefully, he'll returns before too long. The rest of the episode was middle of the road, with a couple of memorable bits – Day's Update segment, Rockwell and Strong's cameos – and a few duds. Next week's finale has a lot riding on it.
Al Bawaba
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Al Bawaba
Donald Trump sketch dominates Mother's Day-Themed SNL cold open
ALBAWABA - SNL Mother's Day special takes a turn with Donald Trump parody. On this weekend's "Saturday Night Live" show, things began quite amicably before taking a turn. Before Mother's Day, cast members Kenan Thompson, Marcello Hernandez, and Bowen Yang stood in the open to pay a moving homage to their mothers. However, James Austin Johnson, portraying Donald Trump, abruptly interrupted the moment and sent them all on their way. With a joke about the 69-year-old's hometown, he opened his speech by discussing the recently elected Pope Leo XIV, stating, "We have an American pope—Chicago-style." No ketchup. We like Pope Leo. As Trump went on, Johnson said, "We hope he does … what we want; otherwise, I'll have to send JD back to do his thing." The joke alluded to the vice president's trip to the Vatican just before Pope Francis passed away last month. "We love Catholic — it's one of the stronger Christian organizations, along with the Salvation Army and, I want to say, Chick-fil-A," he said, continuing his discussion of the pope and the Catholic Church. Cecily Strong, a former cast member of Saturday Night Live, soon joined him on stage as Jeanine Pirro, who was named Washington, DC's interim US attorney this week. During her tenure on the show, Strong played Pirro a lot. Strong as Pirro emerged carrying a big black bag that she jokingly described as "a cozy for my Merlot-zy," taking out a bottle of red wine from the bag just for comparison. Trump expressed his admiration for Pirro by saying, "She's a great legal mind, and she has the most important quality I look for in a lawyer: she's on TV," according to Johnson. Later on, he said, "You're very, very tough." "Especially on immigration," Strong said in response to Pirro. "I have no qualms about returning items. My pals are aware that I have returned every salad I have ever bought from a restaurant. I'm not sure. As Trump stated, Johnson remarked, "I've never eaten one." Current "SNL" cast member and "Weekend Update" host Colin Jost, who played Pete Hegseth, made a cameo as the skit came to a close. Walton Goggins, star of "White Lotus," hosted the show, while Arcade Fire performed as a musical guest. NBC broadcasts "SNL" on Saturdays at 11:30 p.m. ET/8:30 p.m. PT.
Yahoo
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
SNL cold open has Donald Trump and Cecily Strong interrupt Mother's Day sketch
The penultimate episode in Saturday Night Live's 50th season aired on Saturday night, hosted by The White Lotus and The Righteous Gemstones actor Walton Goggins with musical guest Arcade Fire. To open the episode, Kenan Thompson, Bowen Yang and Marcello Hernandez were joined by their mothers (although whether or not they're the real-life mothers is not clear) to share a Mother's Day message, as is the SNL tradition. The comedians were promptly interrupted mid-song by President Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson). President Trump talked about tariffs, trade and the new Pope before bringing out the new interim U.S. Attorney for Washington D.C., Jeanine Pirro (Cecily Strong). THE 15 BEST SKETCHES IN HISTORY: They were soon after joined by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth -- with Weekend Update's Colin Jost making a cold open appearance in the role -- and got an update on the recent fighter jet issues. Here is the full skit: Next weekend, the 50th season comes to a close with actress Scarlett Johansson hosting alongside musical guest Bad Bunny. This article originally appeared on For The Win: SNL cold open has Donald Trump, Cecily Strong in Mother's Day sketch
New York Times
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘S.N.L.': Toasting Moms and Toasted Trump Appointees
If you're going to celebrate the election of a new pope, you might as well have some sacramental wine, too. Cecily Strong returned to 'Saturday Night Live' in a guest appearance to reprise her role as the Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro — and to douse Colin Jost, her former Weekend Update desk mate, in alcohol. Alcohol that emanated directly from her own mouth. How the opening sketch of this weekend's 'S.N.L.' broadcast (which was hosted by Walton Goggins and featured the musical guest Arcade Fire) arrived at this place will take a moment to explain. The sketch began with what looked like a traditional Mother's Day tribute, with the cast members Kenan Thompson, Bowen Yang and Marcello Hernández singing an affectionate serenade to their real-life moms, who joined them onstage. But no: this was just a setup for James Austin Johnson to enter the scene as President Trump, holding forth in free-association style on the past week's news. 'There's a new pope from Chicago,' Johnson said, noting the Roman Catholic Church's selection of Robert Francis Prevost, who took the name Pope Leo XIV. 'We have an American pope, Chicago style, no ketchup,' Johnson said. 'But we like Pope Leo. We hope he does what we want. That's what you want the pope to do, what you want, right? Otherwise I'll have to send JD back to do his thing.' He added that Vice President Vance has the 'Midas touch, but for bad things': 'He meets the pope — dead,' Johnson said. 'He goes to India — war. He joins my campaign — Trump wins.' Johnson announced that he had just appointed 'one of the loudest people I know' to be the interim U.S. attorney for Washington: this was the cue for Strong's return as Pirro, a character she played frequently during her 'S.N.L.' tenure. Noting the bag she was carrying, Johnson said, 'Jeanine has brought her files and she's ready to work.' 'Oh, no, this is the cozy for my Merlot-zy,' Strong said as she took a bottle of wine out of the bag. 'I love hiring people from Fox News,' Johnson said. 'They all do an incredible job. Just look at Pete Hegseth — not one mistake.' 'Oh, I love Pete Hegseth; he's my old drinking buddy,' Strong said, taking a swig from her wine glass. Jost, making a rare sketch appearance to play Defense Secretary Hegseth, tapped Strong on the back, shouting 'Surprise!' as he entered. Strong turned toward him and delivered an extended spit take into the side of Jost's face. As the sketch continued, she doused him with wine a second time and with whiskey that Jost opened his mouth and swallowed (after revealing that he'd accidentally added Kim Jong-un to one of his group chats). 'Folks, they're not the A-team,' Johnson said. 'They're the A.A. team.' Opening monologue of the week After interrupting a loving Mother's Day homage from some of its cast members, 'S.N.L.' made up for it by allowing Goggins, a star of 'The White Lotus' and 'The Righteous Gemstones,' to bring his own mother out of the audience and dance with her onstage — first to a slow R&B jam and then to a fast-paced interlude of clogging to a country tune. Goggins also commented humorously on recent headlines that harshly described his physical appearance (like one that called him 'a Greasy, Depressing Little Man Whom No One Saw Coming'). 'For some reason, the part of that headline that offends me the most is the word 'whom,'' Goggins said. 'It just sounds pretentious.' Constitutional convention of the week Though it's somewhat bittersweet to see an 'S.N.L.' sketch about the founding of America that doesn't include Nate Bargatze as George Washington or Lin-Manuel Miranda as Alexander Hamilton, Goggins capably filled that slot in this segment set in Philadelphia in 1789. After a founding father played by Johnson announced the text of the First Amendment, he opened the floor to ask what the second most important principle of this new nation should be. Playing a fellow patriot known simply as Matt and wearing period clothes and a pair of tinted sunglasses, Goggins replied in a confident drawl: 'Guns,' he said. Bring on those well-regulated militias. Music video of the week From the moment this music video starring Jane Wickline begins to the moment it ends, we can confidently assure you that you have no idea where it is going at any moment. Though the number begins as Wickline's tender ode to what she believes is a lost baby shoe she found in the Central Park Zoo, it veers off in a wildly different direction when she finds the shoe's true owner: a full-grown man (Goggins) with baby-size feet. It's no spoiler to say that the video also includes a cameo from Goggins's friend and 'White Lotus' co-star Sam Rockwell. Though he doesn't get a lot of screen time here, Rockwell — as he did on 'The White Lotus' — certainly makes those precious seconds count. Weekend Update jokes of the week Over at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on the election of Pope Leo XIV, a recent appearance by former President Biden on 'The View' and President Trump's choice of Jeanine Pirro as interim U.S. attorney for Washington. Jost began: Che continued:
