Saturday Night Live went long on “Weekend Update” this weekend. Very long.
The Colin Jost and Michael Che-led news segment clocked in at 19 minutes and 55 seconds during Saturday night’s Dakota Johnson-hosted episode, making it the longest “Weekend Update” in more than 10 seasons.
That’s according to SNL stats guru Mike Murray, who writes LateNighter’s weekly screen time reports.
Per Murray, the next-longest “Update” over that span came in Season 50’s penultimate episode, which ran 17 minutes and 45 seconds—meaning Saturday’s edition topped it by more than two minutes.
And it wasn’t just long by “Weekend Update” standards. The episode’s total runtime, minus commercials, was 67 minutes, meaning Jost and Che’s segment alone accounted for 29.7% of the show—just shy of a third of the entire episode.
So where did all that extra time go? Mostly to the desk’s guests.
Saturday’s “Update” featured three “features”—SNL’s behind-the-scenes parlance for visits to the desk—and none was particularly brief.
First up were Mikey Day as Link from The Legend of Zelda and Marcello Hernández as Jason from Grand Theft Auto VI, who spent roughly five-and-a-half minutes arguing over which character had the better video game.
Later, Kam Patterson arrived to share his excitement about Ryan Murphy’s planned Glee reboot, only for Che to quickly determine that Patterson has never actually seen the show. The feature ran about three minutes and 20 seconds.
Sarah Sherman then closed out the segment as New York City matchmaker Debbie Mush, who attempted to find Che a suitable partner before eventually pitching herself for the job. Her appearance lasted just over four minutes.
All told, the three features occupied nearly 13 minutes of the 19:55 segment, leaving Jost and Che about seven minutes for the traditional run of desk jokes—including material on Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, Ken Paxton, and Kristi Noem.
For more SNL stats, catch the Saturday Night Network’s weekly SNL By the Numbers podcast here at LateNighter Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT , or catch the replay afterwards.
