After making a 36-second cameo appearance on last week’s Saturday Night Live, Ryan Gosling returned to host the show for the third time in his career. The Fall Guy star’s screen time of just over 26 minutes is the fifth highest for a Season 49 host, behind those of Bad Bunny, Shane Gillis, Pete Davidson and Ramy Youssef.
Scroll down to see how Gosling stacked up against each of the show’s named performers, including musical guest Chris Stapleton and former cast member Kate McKinnon. Note that our screen time data is calculated using a method that prioritizes face time, meaning that any contiguous (off-screen but in-scene) moments and practically all partial body appearances do not count. 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.
Ryan Gosling – 26:08 / 40.92%
Gosling’s latest hosting gig differed from his previous two (in 2015 and 2017) in that he did not visit the “Weekend Update” desk but did participate in the cold open, reprising his role of alien abductee Todd. After partially singing his way through his monologue, he gave his longest sketch performance of the night (4:37) in “The Engagement” as a man who severely regrets proposing to his girlfriend.
Chris Stapleton – 9:57 / 15.58%
This episode marked the third official SNL outings of both its host and musical guest, as Stapleton had previously performed in 2016 and 2018. Before singing “White Horse” and “Mountains of My Mind” from his 2023 album “Higher,” he showed off his comedy chops in the musical pretaped sketch “Get That Boy Back.”
Michael Che – 6:53 / 10.78%
Che’s longest screen time of the season is attributed to him welcoming both of this week’s “Weekend Update” visitors – Michael Longfellow and surprise guest Caitlin Clark – to his side of the desk. He participated quite actively during the Clark portion, reading a minute’s worth of jokes written by the basketball star at his expense.
Chloe Fineman – 6:25 / 10.05%
Fineman reached her third highest Season 49 screen time by appearing in four sketches, two of which took up at least 34% of her time each. She began the night as the unsuspecting fiancée of Gosling’s “Engagement” character and ended it as an especially loquacious version of movie heroine Erin Brockovich.
Michael Longfellow – 5:46 / 9.03%
Longfellow went directly from being totally absent from last week’s episode (save a goodnights appearance) to achieving his second highest screen time of Season 49. Thanks in large part to his “Weekend Update” guest spot (as himself), he outpaced all of his fellow featured players for the third time this season and first time in 2024.
Kenan Thompson – 5:32 / 8.66%
Thompson has now progressively improved upon his screen time for four weeks in a row. The longest of his three performances in this episode (2:48) occurred in “Can’t Tonight,” in which he played a man whose friends (Gosling and Marcello Hernandez) persistently argue in favor of him going clubbing with them.
Heidi Gardner – 5:15 / 8.22%
Although she doesn’t quite top this screen time ranking, Gardner gave perhaps the most memorable performance of the night as Bobbi Moore, a fictional NewsNation town hall moderator with two Beavis and Butt-Head lookalikes in her audience. After very briefly cracking up when she saw Gosling dressed as the former cartoon character, she fully broke at her first sight of Mikey Day as the latter, unintentionally adding over 20 laugh-filled seconds to her screen time total.
Kate McKinnon – 4:45 / 7.44%
McKinnon, who just hosted SNL on December 16, returned for this episode’s “Close Encounter” cold open in which her classic character, Colleen Rafferty, recounted her most recent extraterrestrial experience. This constituted the veteran cast member’s eighth performance as the character since creating her in 2015 and third alongside Gosling as fellow Pentagon interviewee Todd.
Bowen Yang – 4:20 / 6.78%
Following his portrayal of a U.S. government official in the cold open, Yang appeared just once more during this episode as enigmatic surgeon and cookie entrepreneur Dr. Please in “Doctor.” With three minutes and 13 seconds of screen time in that sketch alone, he outpaced all of its other nine performers by at least 30 seconds.
Sarah Sherman – 4:15 / 6.65%
Although she took part in the same number of sketches as last week (two), Sherman experienced a nearly four-minute jump in screen time. Prior to playing a waitress in “Can’t Tonight,” she spent over three minutes filling in for usual third “Close Encounter” interviewee Cecily Strong, who appeared in all seven previous iterations during her decade-long tenure as a cast member.
Emily Blunt – 4:04 / 6.37%
The Fall Guy co-stars Gosling and Blunt promoted their new movie during his monologue, which centered on their inability to let go of their respective Barbie and Oppenheimer characters almost a year after those films were simultaneously released. She had only ever been seen on SNL once before, as the host of an October 2016 episode.
Colin Jost – 4:03 / 6.34%
This is only the fourth Season 49 episode in which Jost ended up with less screen time than his “Weekend Update” co-anchor. Whereas they were previously separated in these cases by no more than 94 seconds, Jost fell more than two full minutes behind Che this time.
Andrew Dismukes – 4:01 / 6.29%
Dismukes kept his screen time above four minutes for the seventh consecutive week by playing roles in three live sketches. A whopping 71% of his time was spent as “The Engagement” character Brad, a friend of Fineman’s bride-to-be who unwillingly becomes her sketchy fiancé’s confidant.
Mikey Day – 3:55 / 6.13%
Day, who played a total of four characters in this episode, gained a bit more screen time than presumably intended thanks to Gardner’s prolonged reaction to his remarkably authentic Butt-Head get-up. By the end of the sketch, his lead over Gosling in it amounted to 23 seconds.
Marcello Hernandez – 3:31 / 5.51%
Since he landed more than two minutes behind Longfellow, Hernandez’s six-episode streak of outpacing the other four featured players ended this week. He spent all but a few seconds of his time as one of Thompson’s “Can’t Tonight” friends who promised that their night out would involve interactions with Gosling’s real-life partner, Eva Mendes, and “the original dog from Beethoven.”
Chloe Troast – 2:44 / 4.28%
Troast achieved her highest screen time since January 20 by taking on sizable roles in two sketches. Before portraying a grieving granddaughter in “Doctor,” she displayed her vocal prowess as the most prominent character in “Get That Boy Back”: Jenny, a seemingly scorned woman obsessed with exacting revenge on her boyfriend (Stapleton).
Caitlin Clark – 2:20 / 3.65%
Record-smashing Iowa Hawkeyes player and WNBA prospect Clark visited “Weekend Update” to confront Che about his history of jokingly belittling women’s sports. After Julia Stiles on December 9, she is only the second non-cast member or host to appear during the news segment this season.
Ego Nwodim – 2:05 / 3.26%
Nwodim’s second lowest screen time of the season (after December 2) was split between the first two post-monologue sketches. After playing Dismukes’ character’s supportive partner, Aubrey, in “The Engagement,” she and Fineman joined Troast in performing “Get That Boy Back.”
James Austin Johnson – 1:31 / 2.37%
This marked the third instance this season of Johnson’s screen time falling under 100 seconds. In addition to spending 96% of his time in “Doctor” playing the bewildered son of a supposedly deceased man, he briefly showed up at the end of “Beavis and Butt-Head” as King of the Hill character Hank Hill, flanked by Hernandez as Boomhauer, Dismukes as Dale Gribble and Molly Kearney as Bill Dauterive.
Molly Kearney – 0:29 / 0.76%
Kearney narrowly avoided ranking last among the featured players by appearing in three segments. Their brief embodiment of said King of the Hill character was preceded by a monologue cameo as Albert Einstein and followed by a portrayal of an unassuming nurse in “Doctor.”
Devon Walker – 0:19 / 0.50%
Walker’s screen time continually decreasing over the past three weeks led to him being outpaced by the rest of the featured cast for only the second time this season (after December 9). He was only utilized in “Get That Boy Back” as Nwodim’s character’s boyfriend and “Doctor” as a background figure who eventually utters a single line.
Punkie Johnson – 0:16 / 0.42%
Johnson has now ended up with less screen time than her fellow repertory cast members eight times this season. Her three-week total of just 71 seconds includes her single performance in this episode as Walker’s character’s sister in “Doctor.”
Season 49 of SNL continues May 4 with host and musical guest Dua Lipa.
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.
