Less than three weeks after winning her first Primetime Emmy for FX’s The Bear, Ayo Edebiri made her Saturday Night Live hosting debut last night alongside veteran musical guest Jennifer Lopez. Although she is typically afforded less screen time on her home series than male lead Jeremy Allen White, she ended up outpacing everyone with whom she shared the SNL stage, ultimately appearing on-screen for 31% of the episode.
Scroll down to see how Edebiri stacked up against each of the show’s named performers (including U.S. presidential candidate Nikki Haley and surprise musical guests Latto and Redman). Note: our screen time data is calculated by counting only physical and auditory time rather than adding in contiguous (off-screen but in-scene) moments. Screen time in the show’s opening credits, bumpers and goodnights are not included, nor do those portions factor into our assessment of the episode’s total running time.
Ayo Edebiri – 19:33 / 31.04%
Edebiri appeared in 12 out of 13 total segments, sitting out only Weekend Update as is often the case for hosts. She did break from tradition, however, by taking part in the cold open, albeit for a mere 17 seconds. Almost four minutes of her overall screen time was spent delivering her monologue, with her lengthiest sketch performance (2:53) being in the game show parody, Trivia Quest.
Kenan Thompson – 9:18 / 14.77%
The longest-serving SNL cast member was also the most heavily utilized last night, appearing in a total of seven segments. After spending exactly two minutes impersonating Charles Barkley during the CNN Town Hall South Carolina cold open, he dominated the show’s longest post-monologue sketch, Why’d You Say It?, with two minutes and 53 seconds of screen time.
Bowen Yang – 7:59 / 12.68%
Just under half of Yang’s screen time was within the Bad Couples sketch, in which he played a field reporter who meets an array of odd romantic duos while in search of a heartwarming meet cute story. As he interacted with 12 of his fellow cast members plus Edebiri, he remained on screen for an uninterrupted three minutes and 54 seconds.
Jennifer Lopez – 7:58 / 12.65%
Lopez’s fourth stint as SNL musical guest (following appearances in 2000, 2001 and 2010) consisted of performances of two songs from her new studio album, “This Is Me… Now” — the funk-infused “Can’t Get Enough” and the more subdued title ballad. For the former, she was supported on stage by Grammy-nominated rappers Latto and Redman.
Sarah Sherman – 7:36 / 12.07%
Sherman made up for her absence from the show’s first five segments by commanding the back half of Weekend Update, wherein she played C.J. Rossitano, an SNL lottery ticket winner who believes he is Colin Jost’s long lost son. With four minutes and 16 seconds of screen time in the mid-show news segment, she ended up outpacing even Weekend Update co-anchor Michael Che by 68 seconds.
Andrew Dismukes – 6:56 / 11.01%
The longest of Dismukes’s five appearances (3:08) was in Drugs on Campus, which, at 4:04, was the night’s second shortest live sketch. The final segment – People’s Court: Bad Hair Day – was 11 seconds shorter and, like Trivia Quest, featured only five cast members (none of whom hit the 100-second mark).
Colin Jost – 6:39 / 10.56%
After he and Che finished the nearly six-minute news portion of Weekend Update with equitable amounts of screen time, Jost gained an additional three and a half minutes by acting as the straight man to Sherman’s wacky new character, thereby making his total twice as high as his partner’s.
Mikey Day – 6:28 / 10.27%
Day showed up in all of the first four live sketches, but the bulk of his screen time was almost evenly split between just two: Drugs on Campus (2:59) and Trivia Quest (2:54). By appearing in 73% of the former segment, he came close to being its most heavily featured cast member, only falling nine seconds (and less than 4%) behind Dismukes.
Ego Nwodim – 6:22 / 10.11%
Following one 15-second pre-Weekend Update appearance in Bad Couples, Nwodim got a chance to shine as the absurdly biased host of Trivia Quest. With a screen time of 4:13 (or 80%) in that sketch alone, she towered over its other actors, outpacing even Edebiri by a margin of 80 seconds.
Chloe Fineman – 4:58 / 7.89%
Fineman played secondary roles in all four of her sketches, the last of which featured her most prominently. She appeared in two minutes and 10 seconds (or 48%) of School Hypnotist, during which she only uttered 13 words. Heidi Gardner’s screen time in the same sketch was half as long as Fineman’s, but she spoke four times as many words.
James Austin Johnson – 4:37 / 7.33%
Johnson’s nearly four-minute impression of Donald Trump in the cold open (his fourth appearance as the former president this season) constituted over 85% of his screen time in this episode. Afterward, he only briefly showed up in one pre-taped sketch (Dune Popcorn Bucket) and one live sketch (Bad Couples).
Punkie Johnson – 3:31 / 5.58%
More than half of Johnson’s total screen time (2:02) was spent portraying town hall co-moderator Gayle King during the cold open. Along with Day, Fineman, Gardner and Molly Kearney, she was one of five cast members to not appear in either of the episode’s prerecorded sketches.
Michael Che – 3:08 / 4.97%
Once he and Jost finished delivering the week’s news, Che stayed out of frame for about four minutes as his co-anchor interacted with their sole guest on his own. This marked the fourth such instance this season and first since the sixth episode on December 2, when Jost independently spoke with Michael Longfellow’s personified cigarette.
Marcello Hernandez – 2:57 / 4.68%
With appearances in just three segments – including just four-seconds in Drugs on Campus – Hernandez ended up with more screen time than any of his fellow featured players. A staggering 85% of his time (2:30) was spent playing Dune Popcorn Bucket’s lead character: a high schooler who performs a song inspired by his hormonal feelings toward the titular piece of movie memorabilia.
Devon Walker – 2:40 / 4.23%
Featured cast member Walker’s relatively sizable screen time was spread out over five segments, none of which he appeared in for more than 45 seconds. His longest performance was in Drugs on Campus, while his shortest was a 23-second reprisal of his Senator Tim Scott impression during the cold open.
Heidi Gardner – 1:34 / 2.49%
Discounting the Weekend Update anchors, Gardner finished as this episode’s lowest ranked repertory cast member by a margin of 117 seconds. After amassing 31 seconds in three of the first 10 segments, she added more than a minute to her total by appearing in almost a quarter of School Hypnotist.
Chloe Troast – 1:27 / 2.30%
After taking part in Dune Popcorn Bucket and Bad Couples, Troast essentially doubled her total by playing a classmate of Edebiri and Fineman’s in School Hypnotist. Though she remained silent for most of the sketch, she was ultimately given another chance to show off her powerful singing voice by joining Edebiri and Thompson in an a capella rendition of Jordin Sparks’s “No Air.”
Michael Longfellow – 1:17 / 2.04%
Despite his short screen time, Longfellow managed to make his mark on four sketches, including both pre-tapes. Although his performances in Dune Popcorn Bucket and Stuck in the Elevator fell under 10 seconds apiece, he was the sole featured player to appear in both, with Thompson and Yang being the only members of the repertory cast to do so.
Redman – 1:01 / 1.61%
Although he has maintained an active music career for more than 30 years, Redman had never even made so much as a cameo on SNL until J.Lo recruited him for the first live performance of “Can’t Get Enough.” The Def Jam rapper added an all-new verse to the song, which had been released in its original form almost a month earlier.
Latto – 0:38 / 1.01%
Latto’s unexpected SNL debut came as less of a surprise than Redman’s, given her guest credit on the previously released remix of “Can’t Get Enough.” She was the second female rapper to perform this season, following premiere episode headliner Ice Spice.
Nikki Haley – 0:36 / 0.95%
Trump’s main opponent in the race for the 2024 GOP nomination momentarily appeared as herself during the cold open, which ended with her doing the honor of delivering the show’s famous introduction. In her exchanges with Johnson (as Trump) and Edebiri (as a concerned voter), she poked fun at the ex-president’s advanced age and acknowledged her own campaign missteps.
Molly Kearney – 0:31 / 0.82%
The only cast member to take part in just one segment (or less than three, for that matter) was briefly seen in Bad Couples as an in-studio host of Good Mornin’ New York. Their three lines of dialogue consisted of 36 words, giving them an average of over one word per second.
Martin Herlihy – 0:15 / 0.40%
While this episode (like three others this season) did not include a Please Don’t Destroy short, Herlihy still represented the group by acting as Nwodim’s arm candy in this romance-themed sketch. Despite the fact that he remained completely silent during his very short appearance, he managed to elicit three full seconds of enthusiastic cheers from the audience.
Season 49 of SNL continues February 24 with host Shane Gillis and musical guest 21 Savage.
Can’t get enough SNL stats? Join us for an in-depth discussion of this week’s screen time, power rankings, and more on the Saturday Night Network’s By The Numbers podcast, streaming live Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET, right here on LateNighter.
