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.
Only the ninth first-time host since the start of last season, Josh O’Connor made his SNL debut with the lowest host screen time in over a year. See how he and musical guest, Lily Allen, stacked up against the cast and a late night cameo from Dakota Johnson.
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.
Josh O’Connor 16:09 (25.7%)
Starting off with the ninth-shortest monologue (03:00) of the past 10 seasons, Josh O’Connor’s episode then delivered the fourth-most live sketch time in that same span (30:42). Despite appearing in all seven of the live sketches, he had a low average per appearance, just 01:52. Only two hosts since Season 49 have had a lower screen time total: Michael Keaton (15:49) and Jean Smart (12:18), both early in Season 50.
Bowen Yang 10:39 (16.9%)
In the week before his Wicked: For Good costar Ariana Grande arrives to host the final show of 2025, Bowen Yang posted his fourth-best screen time total in his six-year-plus SNL career. Yang appeared in five live sketches, scoring leads in three of them: as Simon, a 12-year-old college student, The Wizard of Oz himself, and the fourth appearance of the mysterious Dr. Please (now Yang’s second-most recurring character behind Trade Daddy, Chen Biao). He was averaging 04:23 per episode in Season 51 up until this point.
Ashley Padilla 08:21 (13.3%)
In her 28th episode, Ashley Padilla made her 100th career appearance in a small voice role during the animated short, ” Brad and His Dad: Christmas.” She now has more screen time through the first eight episodes of Season 51 than she did in all of her rookie year. She made eight appearances in a single episode for the second time this season, and is currently on one of the best screen time runs in years. She’s averaging 08:42 per episode over the last six episodes, something done by Cecily Strong in her final six episodes and Kate McKinnon in the first half of Season 45. Padilla reprised her impression of Karoline Leavitt in the Cold Open, played an 84 year-old dating show contestant, the bride-to-be in the “Bachelorette Party Strippers” sketch, and Heatherrrrr, the hovering mother of Bowen Yang’s boy genius in “College Class.” She is set to hit two hours of career screen time with the Christmas episode.
Sarah Sherman 07:40 (12.2%)
For the fourth time this season and 14th in her career, Sarah Sherman scored over 7 ½ minutes of screen time. Her most prominent appearances came as Dorothy in the “Wizard of Oz Deleted Footage” sketch (02:46) and in “Bachelorette Party Strippers” (02:32). She has over 10 minutes more time than at this point last season.
Lily Allen 06:14 (9.9%)
Lily Allen returned as musical guest for the first time since 2007. She performed “Sleepwalking” and “Madeline” from her album West End Girl, released in October. The album and Allen’s specific songwriting style were the subject of the night’s final sketch, “Lily Allen Brunch,” and included an appearance from the singer herself. Although she was the first musical guest of the season to appear in a sketch, she had the lowest screen time for a musical guest since Morgan Wallen (05:47) last March.
Chloe Fineman 06:11 (9.8%)
Chloe Fineman quietly made eight appearances of her own for just the third time of her career. Following a brief encore as CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in the “Trump Air Force One” Cold Open, she missed just one pretape and one sketch for the remainder of the night. Fineman is set to hit seven hours of career screen time in the upcoming Ariana Grande episode.
Jane Wickline 06:02 (9.6%)
Jane Wickline scored her second-highest screen time of her career this week, thanks in part to her seventh “Weekend Update” appearance. She followed up last week’s “Cousin Song” pretape with a song about the Stranger Things cast at the “Update” desk. Wickline had only had two live sketches before in her career over 01:20, but had two in Josh O’Connor’s episode; “Lily Allen Brunch” (01:26) and “Bachelorette Party Strippers” (01:39).
Kenan Thompson 05:46 (9.2%)
Kenan hit around his average of the past 150 episodes (05:40). His biggest appearance came as the Cowardly Lion in “Wizard of Oz Deleted Footage” (02:53) and a familiar role, game show host, in “Let’s Find Love.” Thompson ranks 10th among the cast in screen time this season, and is tied with Mikey Day for fifth in appearances.
Colin Jost 05:34 (8.9%)
With nearly 11 minutes in last week’s Melissa McCarthy episode, Colin Jost posted about half as much screen time in this week’s episode. He saw Marcello Hernández and Jane Wickline on his side of the “Update” desk.
James Austin Johnson 05:29 (8.7%)
James Austin Johnson made four appearances in a single episode for the 40th time of his career, the first of which was his 46th Trump impression. He later appeared as Scrooge in “Characters on Characters,” alongside Ashley Padilla in “Your Year Wrapped,” and a voice-over in the game show sketch following Josh O’Connor’s monologue. This season, 45% of his screen time has occurred during the Cold Open.
Veronika Slowikowska 05:25 (8.6%)
Veronika Slowikowska had the best night among the rookies with her second episode of over five minutes on screen. She has a higher screen time total through her first eight (27:15) than any of the senior women of the cast had in their rookie years. Slowikowska averaged 01:05 in a five-appearance night.
Andrew Dismukes 04:32 (7.2%)
Outside of Colin Jost, Andrew Dismukes leads the men of the cast in screen time (45:25) due to his consistent four-plus minute episodes all season. His role as the Scarecrow in “Wizard of Oz Deleted Footage” (02:32) accounted for the bulk of his time this week.
Marcello Hernández 04:01 (6.4%)
Marcello Hernández made his 16th Weekend Update appearance (and fourth as himself) to comment on the holiday season. He is currently five appearances away from his 200th.
Ben Marshall 03:08 (5.0%)
Ben Marshall paired with host Josh O’Connor to play “Augie and Remington,” the most sensitive male strippers in the Catskills, in his third-longest appearance of the season. He fared much better than his rookie male castmates, who all finished with under 30 seconds each.
Michael Che 02:42 (4.3%)
Michael Che’s streak extended to six consecutive episodes without a guest correspondent on “Weekend Update” and logged his lowest screen time since John Mulaney’s episode in November 2024. Che averaged 04:22 in Season 50, compared to 03:33 so far in Season 51.
Dakota Johnson 02:00 (3.2%)
Two-time host Dakota Johnson made a cameo as the titular “Madeline” in Lily Allen’s second performance. (She had 19:23 of screen time when she last hosted in Season 49.)
Mikey Day 01:59 (3.2%)
For just the 18th time since the start of Season 44, Mikey Day had less than two minutes of screen time. “Brad and His Dad,” the animated short he debuted in the Nikki Glaser episode with writing partner Streeter Seidell, returned for a second installment. Day’s longest live appearance came near the end of the episode, as The Grinch in “Characters on Characters.”
Jeremy Culhane 00:21 (0.6%)
It was a tough week for three of the men in the Season 51 rookie class, starting with Jeremy Culhane. He followed up his two strongest episodes (with Melissa McCarthy and Glen Powell) with a career low in Josh O’Connor’s week. His lone appearance came in the Cold Open.
Tommy Brennan 00:16 (0.4%)
After averaging over five minutes in the past three episodes, Tommy Brennan hit a new career low with 16 seconds as an Air Force One reporter in the Cold Open. His 26:01 of screen time on the season ranks him 13th in the cast.
Kam Patterson 00:05 (0.1%)
Patterson finished last in the cast for the fifth time this season and hit a new career low with just a five-second appearance in the “Your Year Wrapped” pretape. He is now averaging just 90 seconds per episode in Season 51.
