One day after the release of her third studio album, Radical Optimism, Dua Lipa pulled double duty as host and musical guest of Saturday Night Live. Though her overall screen time constituted over 36% of the May 4 episode, her specific sketch time of less than 16 minutes is the lowest for a Season 49 host so far.
Scroll down to see how Lipa stacked up against each of the show’s named performers, including surprise guests Jerry Seinfeld and Troye Sivan. 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.
Dua Lipa – 23:06 / 36.31%
Lipa’s first SNL hosting gig coincided with her third musical guest stint, following performances in 2018 and 2020. In addition to singing “Illusion” and “Happy for You,” she took part in five live and three pretaped sketches, ending up with a screen time five minutes lower than that of October host and musical guest Bad Bunny.
Colin Jost – 9:12 / 14.46%
Jost achieved his highest screen time of the season by appearing in just over 60% of this week’s particularly lengthy “Weekend Update” segment. After April 6, this marks the second occurrence of him outpacing all of his Season 49 cast mates.
Kenan Thompson – 8:47 / 13.81%
Thompson’s sizable roles in three live sketches gave him his second highest screen time of Season 49 behind his premiere episode total of 10:18. He was utilized for over two minutes each in the “Community Affairs” cold open, “Young Spicy” and “OBGYN.”
Mikey Day – 7:25 / 11.66%
Day has now hit the seven-minute mark five times this season and twice in 2024. In this case, nearly two-thirds of his time was spent playing rap feud-obsessed South Carolina morning show host Mason Monroe in “Good Morning Greenville.”
Heidi Gardner – 6:26 / 10.11%
Gardner’s highest screen time since March 2 was spread over five segments, including Lipa’s monologue in which she briefly showed up as disgraced South Dakota governor Kristi Noem. Later, she racked up over four and a half minutes in “Good Morning Greenville” as Day’s character’s equally tactless co-host.
Marcello Hernandez – 5:54 / 9.27%
For the ninth time this season, Hernandez was afforded more time on screen than his four fellow featured players. Before briefly participating in the pretaped “Teeny Tiny Statement Pin,” he appeared for nearly three minutes each as a man on a strange first date in “Sonny Angel” and as Noem’s nervous new dog, Cricket VII, during “Weekend Update.”
Bowen Yang – 5:11 / 8.15%
After posing as an inquisitive audience member during Lipa’s monologue, Yang took part in one pretaped and two live sketches. In addition to reprising his Season 48 role of Mitchell in “Jingle Pitch 2,” he played a wannabe activist celebrity in “Teeny Tiny Statement Pin” and a lascivious collectible doll in “Sonny Angel.”
James Austin Johnson – 5:01 / 7.89%
Johnson’s only live physical appearance in this episode was as a member of the funk duo Soul Booth in “Jingle Pitch 2.” In addition to acting in the prerecorded segments “The Anomalous Man” and “Penne Alla Vodka,” he contributed voice work to “Good Morning Greenville,” “Teeny Tiny Statement Pin” and “Weekend Update.”
Ego Nwodim – 4:12 / 6.60%
Nwodim more than doubled her screen time in the previous episode by showing up in three of this week’s segments. Her longest performance of the night (2:19) was her final one in “OBGYN” as an expectant mother whose vacationing doctor leaves her in the care of former barbecue pitmaster Fat Daddy (Thompson).
Chloe Fineman – 4:11 / 6.58%
Aside from participating in all three of this episode’s pretaped sketches as well as “Jingle Pitch 2,” Fineman spent over three minutes visiting “Weekend Update” for the third time this season. Prior to embodying reinvented pop star JoJo Siwa this week, she had appeared during the news segment as herself on December 9 and as a fictional TikToker on March 30.
Andrew Dismukes – 3:19 / 5.21%
This episode marked the end of Dismukes’s seven-week streak of clearing the four-minute screen time threshold. All but 19 seconds of his time was confined to the “Jingle Pitch” sequel in which he again joined Johnson as the other half of Soul Booth.
Michael Che – 3:11 / 5.00%
Che and Jost’s six-minute screen time difference here is their highest of Season 49 and exceeds the 18-episode average by more than three minutes. For the seventh time this season, Che did not interact at all with any of the “Weekend Update” guests, all three of whom were welcomed to his co-anchor’s side of the desk.
Devon Walker – 3:08 / 4.93%
Walker reached his highest screen time since February with performances in three live sketches. Before portraying a weatherman in “Good Morning Greenville” and reuniting with the rest of the “Jingle Pitch” cast, he spent over two minutes playing an increasingly flustered record producer in “Young Spicy.”
Sarah Sherman – 3:07 / 4.90%
Following a similar occurrence on April 6, Sherman was only seen once this week during a prerecorded sketch. In this case, however, her screen time comparatively quadrupled as she starred opposite Lipa as disfigured English writer Peter in “The Anomalous Man.”
Jerry Seinfeld – 2:34 / 4.03%
Seinfeld, who hosted SNL twice during the ‘90s, stopped by “Weekend Update” to promote his new Netflix film, Unfrosted, by joking about his omnipresence across the media landscape over the past few weeks. He had last been seen on the show during the Season 43 finale, hosted by Tina Fey.
Michael Longfellow – 1:13 / 1.91%
After topping last week’s featured cast member ranking with close to six minutes on screen, Longfellow was utilized in just one of this week’s sketches. Once he finished playing fictional Spectrum News host Ryan Abernathy in the cold open, he sat out for the remainder of the night.
Punkie Johnson – 0:23 / 0.60%
Johnson, who only briefly appeared as Fat Daddy’s assistant at the end of “OBGYN,” has now ended up with less screen time than all of her fellow repertory cast members nine times this season. Over the past four weeks, she has only been seen on screen for a total of 94 seconds.
Molly Kearney – 0:08 / 0.21%
Despite only playing the small role of a funeral attendee in “Penne Alla Vodka,” Kearney is technically not at the bottom of this week’s cast member ranking. That distinction belongs to Chloe Troast, who, like Kearney on March 30 and Longfellow on April 6, did not appear at all in this episode (except during goodnights).
Troye Sivan – 0:05 / 0.13%
Sivan, whose connection to Lipa dates back to when she opened for him on tour in 2016, introduced her “Illusion” performance. The artist, who was memorably impersonated by November host Timothée Chalamet, had only made one earlier SNL appearance as a Season 43 musical guest.
Season 49 of SNL continues next week with host Maya Rudolph and musical guest Vampire Weekend.
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.
