Weird Al Yankovic has been a comedy institution for more than four decades at this point, having produced TV shows, music videos, films, and, of course, hundreds of beloved parody songs. Which raises a question: Why hasn’t he ever hosted Saturday Night Live, huh?
And by “raises a question,” we mean Yankovic himself very publicly raised the question recently in a conversation with People, after talking about a time when his pal Andy Samberg called him up to get his okay for an impression of Yankovic he was going to be doing on the series. The parody master agreed to that easily—what are you going to do, hurt Weird Al Yankovic’s feelings?—but then pivoted to asking a question that we, honestly, would like to know the answer to, too: “I wonder, ‘Why I haven’t done that yet?’ and that’s one of them,” Yankovic mused. “But you know it, you know it still may happen. Who knows?” (Also, since you asked, Yankovic said he’d rather host than serve as musical guest, since “If you host, you have more permission to mess up. As a musical guest if you get one note wrong, you’re a failure.”)
Honestly, if you’d asked us before tonight, “Has Weird Al every been on Saturday Night Live?” we probably would have fired back a “Must have done, yeah?” (Maybe around the time his delightfully fictitious “biopic” Weird was making the rounds.) Yankovic, who was interviewed by People while attending the 2024 Children’s Hospital Gala in Los Angeles on Saturday, doesn’t seem super put out about never having done the long-running sketch show, but at the same time: Probably would make for a pretty fun episode, right?