Hours before NBC’s Saturday Night Live potentially takes a crack at the First Lady’s peculiar recent presser, SNL UK on Saturday evening debuted its own take on the suddenly Epstein files-obsessed Melania Trump.
In the Cold Open to SNL UK’s fourth straight episode (hosted by The ‘Burbs‘ Jack Whitehall), Annabel Marlow, Al Nash and Jack Shep play a group of friends enjoying a backyard BBQ, accompanied by drinking games starting with Never Have I Ever.
After Shep and Marlow’s characters take turns copping to indiscriminate make-out sessions and “book[ing] a neo-Nazi to headline a music festival,” suddenly from the midst of the hedges appears the First Lady of the United States, to trill in her distinct accent, “Never have I ever been friends with Jeffrey Epstein!”
As the friends express their puzzlement over the very random intrusion, Emma Sidi‘s Melania steps out onto the patio to explain, “I am here to stop you nasty people spreading nasty rumors about me!”
Except, of course, they weren’t.
When the party game switches to Truth or Dare, Melania jumps in, “Ooh, my go! How dare you accuse me of friendship with short-haired sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell!”
The Marlow and Shep characters ask why their uninvited guest keeps bringing up the Epstein files and the infamous pedophile’s associates, after surprising many (including, reportedly, the U.S, president) with her Thursday press conference fixated on same. After all, “Your husband literally started a war to distract us from it,” they point out.
Melania proposes another new game—Charades—and again insists on going first. She mimes rifling through pages of paper, and Nash’s character instantly guesses right, that it’s, yep, the Epstein files.
“And oh, look! I am not in them…,” Melania re-re-reiterates.
The group decides to retreat indoors, and no, FLOTUS isn’t invited. “You’re making it weird,” Marlow’s character explains.
Melania begs for a second chance, lamenting, “I have no friends… since they all randomly died in a maximum security prison.” She then launches into a final party game, Two Truths and a Lie.
“I love my new friends… I like poor people… and, ‘Live from New York, it’s London,'” Sidi’s Trump announced in unison with the others.
On NBC’s SNL, Melania Trump was most recently played by Chloe Fineman (as part of a Property Brothers sketch earlier this season). Others who have tackled the First Lady over the years include Paris Hilton, Molly Shannon, and Cecily Strong (a total of 22 times).
Watch SNL UK ‘s Melania Trump Cold Open at the top of this post.
Josh Johnson is so funny and so darn cute. Looking forward to the interview.