This evening’s Saturday Night Live UK series premiere was a star-studded affair, when it came to surprise cameos.
Officially announced almost a year ago, SNL UK debuted across the pond on Sky One (at 10 p.m. GMT / 6 p.m. ET), and streamed on Sky NOW.
Episodes will stream Stateside Sunday evening on Peacock (exact time TBA).
The series premiere’s unannounced cameos covered the gamut of well-known Brits and familiar faces with comedy bona fides.
Graham Norton—the Irish comedian, five-time BAFTA winner, and longtime host of his eponymous talk show—appeared in the studio audience during host Tina Fey’s monologue, where he took it upon himself to make the American SNL vet “likable” to British audiences.
Also chiming in from floor seats during the monologue were Nicola Coughlan (Bridgerton) and Michael Cera (Arrested Development, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World).
Coughlan asked why Fey, and not a British icon like David Beckham “or Shrek,” was hosting the premiere, while Cera schooled Fey on how his homeland of Canada, like the UK, is part of the Commonwealth of Nations. (Cera famously hosted a UCB-version of NBC’s SNL, with the cast, early into the 2007-08 Writers Guild of America strike.)
Speaking of Bridgerton, Season 1 standout Regé-Jean Page showed up in the night’s final sketch. Page hosted NBC’s SNL in Season 46, hot off his first-season Bridgerton run as Simon Basset, Duke of Hastings; he has the big-screen rom-com You, Me & Tuscany hitting theaters April 10.
Kate Butch of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK (and RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. the World) also made a cameo in the SNL UK premiere, at the close of a Hamnet-inspired sketch featuring cast member George Fouracres as a “c**ty earring”-wearing William Shakespeare, and Fey as the wife he repeatedly leaves at home to frolic in London.
