Saturday Night Live UK has a new YouTube champ—and it’s starting to give its American counterpart a run for its money on the platform.
“Nigerian Wicked,” the breakout sketch from Cynthia Erivo’s Oct. 24 hosting stint, has now surpassed 7 million views on YouTube, making it the most-watched clip in SNL UK history.
LateNighter sister publication TV Tattle’s Norman Weiss was the first to note the milestone in his newsletter over the weekend.
The three-minute pretape reimagines Wicked as a low-budget Nollywood production, with Erivo swapping her usual role as Elphaba to play Glinda opposite SNL UK cast member Ayoade Bamgboye as the green witch. Their trip takes them not to Oz, but “LagOz,” where Hammed Animashaun’s Wizard turns out to be considerably less wealthy than advertised.
The sketch has been a runaway hit almost from the moment it was posted. Two days after its debut, it had already crossed 1.5 million YouTube views; by Wednesday, it was approaching 4 million. And on Friday it overtook “Harry and Meghan Return Home,” which had previously led SNL UK’s long-form clips with more than 6.2 million views.
Its reach is particularly striking when compared with the mothership.
At more than 7.5 million views, “Nigerian Wicked” is now nipping at the heels of the most-watched Saturday Night Live sketches of the show’s still-young Season 52. The U.S. show’s “Republican Midterm Ads” cold open and its “Dream Academy” spoof featuring KATSEYE have each drawn just over 8 million YouTube views.
“Nigerian Wicked” hasn’t exactly lacked critical support, either. Slate’s Nadira Goffe recently declared it “the best SNL sketch in a long time,” praising the sketch’s specificity and its commitment to sending up the visual language and heightened melodrama of older Nollywood films.
