“Saturday Night Live” never strays from touching on topical subjects, including recent celebrity scandals.
During the Season 48 premiere on Saturday, Oct. 1, "SNL" poked fun at some of Hollywood’s recent scandals over the last few years involving alleged flirtatious direct messages.
In what the sketch dubbed “America’s easiest gameshow,” several celebrities competed in the game “Send Something Normal,” including Mikey Day as Adam Levine, James Austin Johnson as Armie Hammer, Kenan Thompson as Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Bowen Yang as himself.
“Alright America, welcome to ‘Send Something Normal.' I’m your host, Halen Hardy,” Miles Teller, the host of the episode, said, before setting up the premise of the show. “The game is very simple. We have four male celebrity contestants and all they have to do is reply to a woman’s DM on Instagram in a way that is normal.”
The contestants who send a normal DM — with a heavy emphasis on "normal" delivered by Teller — have the opportunity to win $100 million.
When introducing each contestant, Teller alluded to rumors of Levine cheating on his wife, Behati Prinslo, after his alleged DMs were leaked and have become social media fodder. Levine denied allegations of cheating.
Hammer's introduction also brought up the sordid claims made against the actor in March 2021 that accused him of rape and emotional abuse. The actor's attorney has denied allegations of sexual assault.
Yang, however, was confident that he would win the challenge as the reigning champion. When citing his reasoning, he told Teller, “Oh, uh, being gay.”
Day was up first as Levine and was presented the challenge of responding to the message, “Hey Adam! Huge fan. Love your music!”
After asking Teller to see the user’s “most liked vacation photo,” Day shared what his response would be, starting with, “Hoooly Moly.”
When Teller asks if Day is sure that’s how he wants to begin his response, Day confirmed, before adding “Hoooooly Moooly” and “Holy crap” as two additional responses.
He delivered one final explicit message, which disqualified him from the round entirely.
Johnson was up next as Hammer and given the task to respond to a message that read, “Hey Armie, hope you’re doing okay.”
“I know there’s been a lot of talk of me in the press, but I’ve done a lot of work on myself and I’ve changed, so I have my message,” Johnson said, before he said his response, “I want to break open your bones and suck out the marrow.”
Naturally, Hammer received the buzzer that let him know that he had been disqualified from the round.
Tyson, who disputed claims of sexual harassment in December 2018, was told to respond to, “Hey Neil, I love your podcast!”
“Oh my goodness, what a kind message,” he said. “What a nice woman, deserves a well-researched response. Please show me her most liked vacation photo.”
Once he was shown the photo, he began to mull over his response before he was given the advice from Teller, “You will win if you just say ‘Thank you.’”
“I have an alternate response,” Thompson said. “Salutations. Perhaps if the stars do align, you would like to come over and peer into my telescope, metaphorically speaking.”
Thompson received several buzzers in succession letting him know that he did not win that round.
Yang, who was meant to be the shoe-in for the round, went into the game confidently when he received the message, “Hey Bow, I’m a huge fan! I would love to be your friend.”
Before Yang could respond to what he said would be an “easy” answer, Teller interrupted to reveal the sender of the message: Dua Lipa.
“Oh no!” Yang said before delivering an explicit response identical to Day’s.
“Bowen, come on man,” Teller says. “Horrible. OK, we’re going to take a quick break but when we come back we’ll see if any of these guys can just say nothing at all.”
Last night's episode featured several topical items in pop culture, including a hilarious sketch about the social media app BeReal starring Teller. The show also did a spoof of the AMC commercial starring Nicole Kidman, with Chloe Fineman doing her best impression of the actor.