SNL UK Screen Time Report: Who Made the Biggest First Impression? (S01 E01)

Editor’s note: Mike Murray will host a special edition of the  Saturday Night Network’s weekly By the Numbers podcast covering the premiere of SNL UK. 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.

Tina Fey hopped across the pond to usher in a new era of Saturday Night Live in London this past weekend. As the inaugural host of SNL UK, she followed in the footsteps of George Carlin, who hosted the very first episode of SNL live from New York in 1975. Read on to see how she measured up with the 11 new cast members and some surprise cameos.

Note: Our 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 an episode’s total running time.

Tina Fey – 21:23 (37.4%)

Fey added an international stop to an already Hall of Fame SNL resume. She was hired as a writer in 1997, became the show’s first female head writer in her third season, and co-anchored the “Weekend Update” desk for six seasons. Since then, she has hosted six times (joining the Five-Timers Club in 2015), and tallied 18:58 her last go-round. In the March 21 SNL UK premiere, Fey appeared in five live sketches (totaling 15:10), two pretapes (01:13), and appeared for 04:51 in her Q&A-style monologue. (Fey, with longtime collaborator Amy Poehler, led the Q&A segment of SNL’s 50th Anniversary Special.) Her longest sketch appearance of the evening came in “Shakespeare’s Sexuality,” which she led as Agnes, the Bard’s wife.

George Fouracres – 14:17 (25.0%)

The Wolverhampton actor and comedian was tapped to star in SNL UK’s first Cold Open, where he played Prime Minister Keir Starmer nervously overthinking his phone call to President Trump. It was his first of seven appearances during the premiere. Fouracres led the first live sketch of the night as well, playing David Attenborough as the host of a dinner party attended by some of history’s most celebrated Britons. He closed out the show in his own live segment, “45 Seconds With Fouracres.” No cast member in the American SNL has reached over 14 minutes in a single episode this season; Ashley Padilla currently holds the Season 51 record with 13:45.

Jack Shep – 14:12 (24.8%)

The Bedfordshire TikTok comedian made eight appearances, the most among the cast. Five of his appearances reached at least two minutes each, including as the Gen-Z advisor to the PM in the Cold Open, Princess Diana in “David Attenborough’s Last Supper,” Fey’s co-star in “Boovies Goes to the Films,” a dancing fetus in “Shy Baby,” and the rave-version of William Shakespeare in the Hamnet-inspired sketch. Shep is the youngest member of the SNL UK cast.

Hammed Animashaun – 08:35 (15.0%)

The London actor (known from the BBC One comedy Black Ops) debuted in the Cold Open as Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, and delivered the first-ever “Live from London, it’s Saturday Night!” with Fouracres and Shep. Animashaun led two segments early in the night, first as host of “Boovies Goes to the Films,” then as Turpin Turpin, the Head of Operations at “The Internet HQ.” Animashaun also played Benjamin Zephaniah in the night’s first sketch, and made two small pretape appearances.

Wet Leg – 06:36 (11.5%)

Wet Leg, the rock band from the Isle of Wight, were tapped as SNL UK’s inaugural musical guest. (Billy Preston and Janis Ian split that responsibility in SNL’s debut in 1975.) They performed “Mangetout” and “Catch These Fists” in their two performance slots, both introduced by Fey. The songs appear on their sophomore album, Moisturizer, which was released last summer.

Ayoade Bamgboye – 05:25 (9.5%)

A Nigerian-British comedian who lists SNL’s Maya Rudolph as an influence, Bamgboye made six appearances averaging about 54 seconds each. Her debut came in the night’s first pretape as a dermatologist for “Underáge” moisturizer. She also played one of Shakespeare’s daughters (01:33), a nurse in “Shy Baby” (01:17), and Mary Seacole (01:18) in “David Attenborough’s Dinner Party.”

Emma Sidi – 05:19 (9.3%)

Sidi, who born in the U.S. before moving to the UK at age 3, led a two-hander sketch late in the night, helping Fey’s Jane with a “Bra Fitting.” It was the night’s longest sketch appearance by a member of the female cast. Sidi debuted in the “Underáge” pretape and made her live debut as famed British singer/presenter Cilla Black at “David Attenborough’s Dinner Party.”

Celeste Dring – 05:03 (8.8%)

The Wolverhampton actress—known from the Channel 4 sitcom The Windsors, where she played Princess Eugenie—made four appearances in the SNL UK premiere. Her longest one came in the “Shy Baby” sketch, playing the expectant mother (02:23). She also played Sir Isaac Newton in “David Attenborough’s Dinner Party,” and appeared in “Bra Fitting” and the “Underáge” pretape.

Paddy Young – 04:32 (7.9%)

The Scarborough comedian co-anchored the debut of SNL UK’s “Weekend Update” segment, which ran about five minutes shorter than the average Stateside “Update” hosted by Colin Jost and Michael Che this season. Young had the honor of entertaining the first “Update” correspondent, Captain Birdseye (played by Al Nash), and displayed some classic British humour with a helium tank. He also appeared in the night’s first pretape and provided a single-word Trump impression during the PM Starmer Cold Open.

Larry Dean – 03:45 (6.6%)

Dean, a Scottish stand-up comedian, made four appearances, first as Freddie Mercury in “David Attenborough’s Dinner Party.” He also played “The X-Man,”an employee tasked with increasing the difficulty of closing pesky pop-up ads at “The Internet HQ,” appeared as Hamnet during the Shakespeare sketch, and was a father excited to feed marmalade sandwiches to Paddington at the “Live Experience”.

Annabel Marlow – 03:45 (6.6%)

Marlow, a stage actress from Oxfordshire, used to run an SNL fan page—a fact she shared during the premiere week’s first promo with Fey. She made her SNL UK debut during “David Attenborough’s Dinner Party,” as Queen Elizabeth I. The longest of her four appearances came during the “Shakespeare” sketch, as one of Will’s daughters.

Al Nash – 03:32 (6.2%)

Nash made his big splash as Captain Birdseye, the fish finger man (01:59) who served as the sole correspondent on the inaugural “Weekend Update” anchored by Ania Magliano and Paddy Young. (Laraine Newman, as a reporter outside the Blaine Hotel, was the only “Update” guest in SNL’s 1975 premiere.) Nash made four appearances in total, including as Fey’s husband in the “Underáge” advert, and as Winston Churchill at David Attenborough’s dinner party.

Ania Magliano – 03:15 (5.7%)

Magliano rounded out the cast, appearing as co-anchor of “Weekend Update” (02:48) and making a second appearance in the “Paddington Live Experience” pretape (00:27).  She follows in the footsteps of host Tina Fey, who anchored “Update” for 118 episodes—80 with Jimmy Fallon, 37 with Amy Poehler, and once with Michael Che during the 2021 Paul Rudd Christmas episode.

Graham Norton – 02:09 (3.8%)

The host of The Graham Norton Show since 2007, he joined Fey on home base during her monologue. (His show has taped in the same studio at Television Centre since 2018.) “I have a gift for making American celebrities likable to a British audience,” Norton claimed before quizzing Fey on her knowledge of British television shows like Faulty Towers, EastEnders and Monty Python.When Fey appeared on Norton’s show in 2015, she discussed trying on bras—a concept explored in her final sketch of the night.

Nicola Coughlan – 01:36 (2.8%)

The Irish actress—best known for playing Clare in Derry Girls and Penelope in Bridgerton— made two cameo appearances. The first came during Fey’s monologue (where she reminded the American host to “educate herself” on British geography); the next came in the night’s final piece, singing an Irish song with Fouracres.

Michael Cera – 00:58 (1.7%)

Cera popped up in Fey’s Q&A monologue to acknowledge that swearing is allowed in the UK version of SNL, before unleashing some cusses of his own. He has never hosted an actual SNL himself, but did cameo in a pretape with Jonah Hill, the third time his Superbad costar hosted in 2014.

Regé-Jean Page – 00:25 (0.7%)

The Bridgerton Season 1 heartthrob dropped by the women’s fitting room to ask out host Tina Fey at the end of the “Bra Fitting.” Page hosted SNL in 2021, during the height of his Bridgerton fame.