Editor’s note: Mike Murray hosts The Saturday Night Network’s weekly By the Numbers podcast. Click the embed at the top of this post to watch it live Wednesday night at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT, or catch the replay afterward.
Nearly four years after he was originally scheduled to host before the delay of Top Gun: Maverick, Glen Powell made a high-flying SNL debut with the screen time stats to back it up.
Scroll to see how he stacked up against each of the show’s named performers, including musical guest Olivia Dean and the return of Will Forte as MacGruber.
Note: Our screen time calculation method prioritizes face time, meaning that any contiguous off-screen-but-in-scene moments and most partial-body appearances do not count. Screen time in the opening credits, bumpers, goodnights, and cut-for-time sketches is not included, nor do those portions factor into our assessment of the episode’s total running time.
Glen Powell 26:11 (42.2%)
Of SNL’s last 150 hosts, Powell ranked 20th in total screen time—12th if you exclude double-duty hosts. His Top Gun costar Miles Teller had nearly identical screen time in his Season 48 debut (26:19). Powell also shattered this season’s average for live-sketch screen time (13:53), logging 18:14. Before this week, he’d made two brief cameos in Sydney Sweeney’s Season 49 episode.
Chloe Fineman 11:22 (18.3%)
Fineman smashed her career high this week, beating her previous record of 08:57 set in Season 46’s Regé-Jean Page episode. Since joining SNL in 2019, this is the first time Fineman has led the cast in screen time. She made eight appearances, her longest in the “Norwegian Movie” sketch.
Ashley Padilla 10:25 (16.8%)
Padilla scored her third-highest career screen time after opening the night as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and anchoring the “AI Photos” and “Haircut” sketches. Just six shows into Season 51, she’s already reached 80% of her rookie season’s total.
Tommy Brennan 08:36 (13.9%)
After averaging 02:48 over his first five episodes and getting his first sketch lead in last week’s Nikki Glaser episode, Brennan put up impressive rookie numbers this week. The first pretape of the night saw him paired with Ben Marshall in the country music video “I Miss My Ex’s Dad.”
Sarah Sherman 08:14 (13.3%)
For the ninth time in her career—and third time this season—Sherman logged an eight-plus-minute episode, averaging 02:04 over four appearances, most significantly in the “Bob Army” sketch alongside Bowen Yang and Glen Powell.
Marcello Hernández 07:09 (11.5%)
On the heels of two rare low-screen-time episodes, Hernández reemerged this week with a pitch-perfect impression of stand-up Sebastian Maniscalco and hit a number similar to the Bad Bunny premiere episode (07:18).
Olivia Dean 06:33 (10.6%)
Performing “Man I Need” and “Let Alone the One You Love,” Olivia Dean put up screen time similar to last season’s musical guests Benson Boone (06:28) and Tate McRae (06:41).
Jeremy Culhane 06:08 (9.9%)
Each episode so far in his rookie season, Culhane has set a new career high. This week saw him make his biggest leap yet—from 03:49 in Nikki Glaser’s episode to over six minutes this week. He’s averaging nearly four appearances per episode.
James Austin Johnson 05:29 (8.8%)
JAJ has now made an appearance in 62 cold opens in his 85 episodes (72.9%). He made his 44th appearance as Donald Trump this week and debuted a new impression: Stellan Skarsgård in the “Norwegian Movie” sketch.
Andrew Dismukes 05:12 (8.4%)
Through six episodes, Dismukes is up to 36:10 in total screen time for Season 51. His rookie-season total was 35:30. His biggest role of the night came in the “Taken: Airport” sketch after Weekend Update.
Bowen Yang 04:33 (7.3%)
Yang rose back up to his career average (04:30) this week and made three appearances: as a reporter in the cold open, the leader of the “Bob Army,” and a friend shocked by Ashley Padilla’s new haircut.
Ben Marshall 04:29 (7.2%)
Marshall, along with fellow rookie male cast members Brennan, Culhane, and Kam Patterson, set a new career high this week—most prominently playing one half of the country-singing duo with Tommy Brennan in the “I Miss My Ex’s Dad” pretape. He’s had a lead in a pretape in three out of six episodes so far.
Will Forte 04:08 (6.7%)
Reprising MacGruber for the first time since hosting in Season 47, Will Forte (cast member from 2002–2010) returned in a new trilogy of pretapes. Chloe Fineman stepped in to fill the female role previously played by Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph.
Veronika Slowikowska 04:03 (6.5%)
Slowikowska logged more than twice the screen time she received last week (01:29), playing an AI-animated great-grandmother in the “AI Photos” sketch with Glen Powell, the rescued daughter in the “Taken” sketch, and a member of the “Bob Army” alongside Kenan Thompson and Ben Marshall.
Kam Patterson 03:53 (6.3%)
Patterson, who averaged under 90 seconds over his first five episodes, earned his highest screen time yet this week, smashing his prior record from Episode 1 (03:07). His most prominent roles in a three-appearance night were as one of the friends on Glen Powell’s bachelor party and as a Fox News reporter.
Colin Jost 03:38 (5.9%)
Jost logged his seventh-lowest screen time of the past 150 episodes in a rare “Weekend Update” with no guest correspondents. He has not made an appearance outside “Update” since the first cold open of the season, when he played Pete Hegseth.
Kenan Thompson 03:21 (5.4%)
Thompson made four appearances this week, none longer than 01:45, as a member of the “Bob Army.”
Michael Che 03:11 (5.1%)
“Weekend Update” ran a mere 06:14 this week—the second-shortest since the episode Glen Powell was originally slated to host: the COVID-impacted Paul Rudd Christmas episode of 2021. Che appeared in almost exactly half of the segment.
Mikey Day 02:34 (4.1%)
Though Mikey Day celebrated his 700th SNL sketch this weekend, he logged his lowest screen time since Mikey Madison hosted last spring (01:48). Across four appearances averaging about 39 seconds each, his longest was as the director in “Norwegian Movie.”
Jane Wickline 01:05 (1.7%)
After putting up four-plus minutes in both the Amy Poehler and Sabrina Carpenter episodes, Jane Wickline has totaled just 03:07 of screen time in the three episodes since. This week she appeared as a crew member in “Norwegian Movie” and in the background of “Bob Army.”
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