Daniel Craig was ostensibly promoting his final James Bond film, No Time To Die, when he hosted Saturday Night Live yesterday. However, the recent worldwide spread of the coronavirus prompted the studio behind the film, as you no doubt already know by now, to push back its release date by seven months, moving from April 10 to November 25. Even so, Craig cracked plenty of Bond jokes on Saturday Night Live, and there were lots of bits about how uneasy COVID-19 is making everyone.
This was Craig’s second time hosting SNL, and even though he’s best known for playing a suave, badass spy, Craig really enjoys being an enthusiastic goofball. Here are his most memorable sketches from last night’s episode.
Opening Monologue
In his opening monologue, Craig admitted that, contrary to what you might think about British people, he is decidedly not a nerd—he’s James Bond. He then gave Phoebe Waller-Bridge a shoutout for her work doing dialogue punch-ups on No Time To Die, promising that this will be the Bond movie in which 007 turns to the camera and asks “Is it bad that I fancy the pope?”
The bulk of the monologue was a pre-recorded sketch in which James Bond gets way too excited and caught up in his luck at the craps table to care much about his top-secret mission. Casino Royale would’ve been very different if this version of Bond (and Kenan Thompson as his No. 1 fan) showed up.
The Sands of Modesto
Craig next appeared in a soap opera parody where all of the actors were, like the rest of us, very concerned about catching or spreading the coronavirus. Craig, who it must be said looks pretty good with a cockatiel as an accessory, shared a passionate scene with Kate McKinnon—well, as passionate as a scene can be when the actors are kissing on opposite sites of a plexiglass sheet, making a barrier of plastic wrap, and wielding a comically oversized prop arm from the other side of the couch. As coronavirus becomes a more and more serious public health crisis, finding the right tone for humor is tricky, but “The Sands of Modesto” is a hoot. (The episode’s other coronavirus-related skit, which brought back Rachel Dratch’s Debbie Downer character as a bummer of a wedding guest, wasn’t quite as successful.)
Accent Coach
“Accent Coach” wasn’t necessarily the best sketch of the night, but it was possibly the Daniel Craig-iest. The actor played himself as he prepared to star in Knives Out. If you’ve seen Knives Out, you’ll remember that Benoit Blanc had a delightfully over-the-top southern accent, as if Craig Kentucky-fried every single syllable. The SNL sketch had Beck Bennett play his vocal coach—and, because this sketch was about Knives Out, you can bet there’s vomit.
Rian Johnson, who directed Knives Out, was tickled to see himself on SNL, for the record.
