To the delight of hardcore SNL fans and comedy nerds everywhere, we got an SNL and SNL UK crossover last night. During the cold opener, James Austin Johnson was brought on to do his fantastic impression of President Donald Trump, and not surprisingly, he crushed on the other side of the pond too. Johnson peppered his trademark rambling with plenty of UK references and had the cast members sharing the scenes with him trying to fight off laughter as he ripped on them for not having anyone in the cast that could play the President.
The video of Austin’s appearance has already been watched more than a million times on YouTube, which is a huge number for the first day of an SNL UK clip. The dozens of comments I looked through were all extremely positive too and about equally split between fans praising the comedian’s impression and fans hyping up the fact that we finally got a collaboration. I wholeheartedly agree with both takes and now my brain is going a mile a minute thinking of all the collaborations I want to see. Specifically, it’s thinking of one collaboration I want to see.
Before I get into where I hope this heads, you can check out the full video of Johnson’s impression below…
There’s obviously a whole host of beloved SNL characters I’d love to see on the UK version, as well as some outrageous British weirdness that I’d love to see on the flagship version, but to me, there’s a pretty clear collaboration that we need and that would make a ton of sense. We desperately need a Weekend Update swap.
Some random SNL UK sketches have gone viral and there’s been a lot of positivity around the cast, but I think the most consistently buzzy thing about SNL UK, at least from our perspective in the United States, has been the spinoff’s take on Weekend Update. Co-anchors Paddy Young and Ania Magliano have developed a really nice chemistry and read the fake news without pulling a single punch. At least a joke or two of theirs gets shared widely on social media after every episode.
It would be fun to expose Young and Magliano to a wider audience in the United States, and it would be fun to bring Michael Che and Colin Jost over to SNL UK as a delightful surprise for fans. They’ve, of course, been hosting the US version for over a decade now and are widely considered to be among the best to ever do it. Just as the live audience lost their minds when they saw James Austin Johnson’s Trump, I’d have to imagine they would be so fired up to see Jost and Che.
Beyond just the novelty, however, it would be nice to see both duos get out of their comfort zone and work on jokes for a new audience. I’m sure Che and Jost would have a field day coming up with some wild UK-based segments and topics of conversation, and it would be fun for everyone to see Young and Magliano go for the throat with some jokes that would likely feel edgier and more aggressive than what the US audience normally gets to see.
I have no idea if James Austin Johnson’s guest appearance is a sign that we’re about to get a lot more crossovers or if it’ll go down as a one-off bit of fun. We've gotten SNL stars as hosts before, but this felt like a more direct shared universe situation. Personally, I’d like to see this sorta thing happen a lot more often, and if we’re going to go there, I really need to see this Weekend Update swap.
