Steve Martin Asks the Audience to Embrace Joy in SNL50 Monologue
John Mulaney and Martin Short crashed the stage as well.
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So, that’s why Steve Martin dropped into the Comedy Cellar yesterday. After Sabrina Carpenter and Paul Simon kicked off SNL50 with a song, the show’s laughs began in earnest with a monologue from one of its most celebrated hosts, Martin — or as he introduced himself, “SNL’s newest diversity hire.” The legendary comedian kept things pretty lowkey to start off, with a couple of jokes referencing current events (he said he was vacationing on the “Gulf of Steve Martin” when he got the call from Lorne Michaels to open the show) and a few jokes that didn’t feel particularly relevant to the occasion, but were nonetheless welcome reminders of Martin’s stand-up prowess. It didn’t take too long for Martin to get to SNL’s big milestone, though, joking that “a person born during the first season of Saturday Night Live could, today, be easily dead of natural causes.”
#SNL50 monologue! pic.twitter.com/1L4xgiZ9r1— Saturday Night Live - SNL (@nbcsnl) February 17, 2025
The monologue picked up momentum at this point, as Martin began celebrating the occasion by joking about SNL itself, as well as the show’s spectacle. He even cracked a joke about SNL’s history of uneven monologues: “The monologue is like a rent-controlled tenant: It’s not going anywhere, even though it stinks.” Martin proceeded to tell a few jokes about famous people in the audience like Bill Murray and David Letterman before shouting out the “heart and soul” of the show: the writers. Cut to two dozen or so writers from SNL’s history standing outside 30 Rock behind a blockade holding umbrellas. Former writer John Mulaney then crashed the 8H stage to joke about the difficulties of working with SNL’s celebrity hosts: “As I look around, I see some of the most difficult people I’ve ever met in my entire life. Over the course of 50 years, 894 people have hosted Saturday Night Live, and it amazes me that only two of them have committed murder.” Mulaney was followed by Martin Short, and he and Martin launched into a bit of their signature double-act banter, before Short, a Canadian, was escorted offstage by ICE agents for not having his passport on him.
Martin wrapped up the monologue with a jokingly sincere plea to the audience at home that served as a pre-emptive rejoinder of sorts to the people who will inevitably scrutinize tonight’s show and conclude that it wasn’t funny enough to justify all the hooplah: “If you aren’t enjoying it, maybe you should get up and take a good look at yourself in the mirror and say to yourself, ‘What have I become?’ … Ask yourself: ‘When did I abandon joy, and what can I bring to the monologue as an audience member next time?’”
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