Saturday Night Live previously confirmed that Ryan Gosling would host the season opener on September 30 and now, we know two more actors who will lend their comedic talents to the NBC sketch comedy series: Gal Gadot and Kumail Nanjiani, Variety reports. Both will be hosting the show for the first time.
Gadot will host SNL‘s October 7 episode and be joined by musical guest Sam Smith; while Nanjiani will host on October 14 with Pink performing live. Gosling hosted once before in 2015, where he got plenty of attention for cracking up in virtually every skit. Whether he will be able to maintain a straight face this time around or not remains to be seen. But we do know he will be joined by Jay Z as musical guest.
Best known for her role as the new Wonder Woman, which performed big at the box office, Gadot also showed her ability to do comedy in the 2016 film Keeping Up With the Joneses, in which she starred alongside Jon Hamm, Zach Galifianakis, and Isla Fisher. She will reprise her role as Wonder Woman in the upcoming film Justice League, and in the Wonder Woman sequel, set to hit theatres in 2019. Chances are we will probably see at least one superhero-themed sketch featuring the actress.
Meanwhile, Nanjiani has captured viewers’ hearts as the awkward and cynical Dinesh in HBO’s Silicon Valley. And the recently released indie comedy film The Big Sick, in which he both starred and wrote, has been getting fantastic reviews with a 98 percent critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
This will mark SNL’s 43rd season, and the series is coming off a big year. SNL enjoyed a stellar 42nd season thanks to plenty of political material and popular impersonations, including Alec Baldwin’s Emmy-winning impression of Donald Trump and Melissa McCarthy’s hilarious interpretation of former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer. The series received 22 Emmy nominations and won a number of them, including Outstanding Variety Sketch Series.
This season, SNL will continue to air live in all time zones, a strategy it switched to near the end of last season, including 11:30 p.m. ET, 10:30 p.m. CT, 9:30 p.m. MT, and 8:30 p.m. PT, with the broadcast airing on “repeat” in the latter two time zones at 11:30 p.m. There will be some significant changes, though, as regular cast members Bobby Moynihan, Vanessa Bayer, and Sasheer Zamata all left the series. There is no word as yet on their casting replacements.
