Ana de Armas celebrates a big year with 'SNL' hosting duties

By Omar L. Gallaga

April 16, 2023 6:53 AM PT

“Knives Out” and “Blonde” star Ana de Armas hosted this week’s “Saturday Night Live,” and as promised in a Spanish-language promo with both her and the musical guest Karol G, language was a recurring theme in the opening monologue and in a few sketches. For her part, De Armas acquitted herself well in a mixed bag of sketches.

The episode featured several recurring characters, including Matt Schatt (Mikey Day), a married-out-of-his-league game show contestant, and Ego Nwodim‘s Lisa from Temecula, who ruins a wedding by tossing a salad aggressively for most of her sketch. De Armas played a voice artist specializing in sexy, but off-putting music producer tags; the wife of the man (Bowen Yang) with the world’s longest fingernails; and an American Girl doll with a tragic past. De Armas even kept her composure while playing a dog acting coach in a sketch where the dogs on stage seemed terrified and nothing went right. Musical guest Karol G performed “Mientras Me Curo del Cora” and “Tus Gafitas.”

This week’s cold open was pretty specific: the weather in New York City, which reached 90 degrees, two months ahead of schedule. This prompts the “First Warm Day of the Year Arrivals Show,” hosted by Heidi Gardner and Yang, which is like an awards pre-show but with green Central Park grass instead of a red carpet. It features “the freaks, crazies and weirdos” you can find there when the weather’s nice. Arrivals include Older Man Doing an Aggressive Power Walk (Day), Two Perverts Who Came to the Park to Pleasure Themselves (Michael Longfellow and James Austin Johnson) (“Nice to be out of the subway!”), a Lady Trying to Tell Someone Where She Is (Nwodim) and Grown Man With a Drone Who’s Alone (Andrew Dismukes) among others.

De Armas began her monologue in Spanish before switching: “Just kidding, I speak English,” she said. She spoke about immigrating to the U.S. from Cuba when she was 26 and learning English by watching “Friends,” particularly Chandler Bing. “Could I be any better at English?” she joked. That’s two opening monologues in the same month that referenced “Friends,” in case you’re keeping track. De Armas focused on her rise to fame and the gratitude she has for her success. She said it’s been a big year for her with her recent Oscar nomination for “Blonde” and her plans to become a U.S. citizen in three weeks. She mentioned that one of her first co-stars, Robert De Niro, went out of his way to meet her father when he visited Cuba. Then she became a New York Times crossword puzzle answer. And now, she’s an “SNL” guest host.

Best sketch of the night: The ‘American Girl’ movie trailer nobody asked for

Someone on the writing staff is very plugged into the American Girl universe, as evidenced by a previous sketch this season about a cafe themed to the popular dolls. This episode features a movie trailer for “American Girls” inspired by the popularity of the “Barbie” movie previews, but with a lot less pink and a lot more trauma. Featuring live-action cast members playing the dolls from the different historical periods, the trailer focuses on their sad back stories (nearly all of them lost a parent to a “vague, old-timey disease”) and how several of them die of cholera on their way to the modern world. Nwodim’s character, Addy, doesn’t remember her birthday because she was a runaway slave. A sleepover includes a fashion show where the “overburdened pre-teens wear four layers of petticoats and pantaloons.” No matter how bad things get, though, they’ve got a chipper catchphrase: “That’s OK!”

Also good: A teacher gets schooled in ‘Spanish Class’

Day plays a high school Spanish teacher who has a class struggling with basics of the language. But the students get much more interested in learning when two siblings (De Armas and Hernandez) transfer in from Miami but are from Cuba. Every question from the teacher elicits a string of fast, complex Spanish from the new students, causing an increasingly sweaty and uncomfortable Day to try to pick out a word or two he recognizes (“Arroz?”). De Armas’ character even corrects the teacher’s translation for being in love with a more commonly used and romantic expression. The siblings also point out that “asi asi” is a phrase that Spanish speakers in their country don’t really use. The sketch concludes when the brother and sister introduce their cousin (Karol G), who leads the class in a musical performance of the alphabet that has everyone up from their desks and dancing.

‘Weekend Update’ winner: Colin Jost is spiritually roasted

Kenan Thompson got big laughs as neglected “Super Mario Bros. Movie” character Funky Kong, but it was meditation guru Genesis Fry (Sarah Sherman) who stole the show by leading Jost through an abusive guided meditation. Fitting with the running gag on “Weekend Update” of painting Jost as an entitled, self-regarding racist, Genesis painted Jost as someone who counts the number of laughs he gets versus Michael Che, who goes home and rewatches himself on TV, and who is only recognized at the NBC Rockefeller Center store by the 32 women accusing him of some sort of wrongdoing. She rubs Jost’s chest and arm as she holds his hand, saying his bicep was smaller than she imagined and that his hand is soft from never having done a day of honest work. She concluded by making Jost repeat an inspirational quote, one that, it turns out, is credited to Adolf Hitler. The jokes were good, but it was Sherman’s over-the-top delivery and Jost’s embarrassed reactions that made the bit work so well.