Ayo Edebiri Proves Female Stand-Ups Rule on ‘SNL’

I saw this post the other day on Instagram and had to look at it twice. Could this infographic actually be right? It took me a hot second to wrap my brain around it: Only nine female stand-up comics have ever hosted Saturday Night Live — and that’s including last night’s performance by Ayo Edebiri.

Seriously, what? This season alone, male stand-ups Pete Davidson, Nate Bargatze and the just-announced Shane Gillis (who didn’t see that coming?) are on the hosting roster. That’s three dudes in half a season compared to nine in 49 seasons for the ladies. And there wasn’t a bad host in that nine-member bunch. The disparity is all the more startling thanks to Edebiri absolutely crushing her debut.

Of course, Edebiri is more than a comic. While stand-up is where she started, her recent Golden Globe and Emmy wins for The Bear have already served notice that the comedy acting chops are real. But that comedian background never hurts — check out the confidence with which she sails through her monologue compared to the awkward stammerings of 2024’s other hosts, Dakota Johnson and Jacob Elordi. The jokes aren’t much better, but she sure the hell is.

Edebiri shined in multiple sketches that were unfortunately slotted in the back half of the show. The highlight was her turn as Solomon, the nerdy boy in a middle school class visited by Andrew Dismukes’ master hypnotist. After lisping that neither he nor his mother has given their “conthent” to being hypnotized, Solomon uses the possibility to confess his darkest pubescent secrets.

She also killed in a sketch where five people in a broken elevator make plans to hook up, start a new elevator utopia and never return to humanity again.  Please, Saturday Night Live, more weird shit like this! The night’s multiple game-show parodies were fine, I guess, but sketches like “Stuck In An Elevator” are the ones that will end up in Edebiri’s Emmy submission packet. 

The Dune popcorn cup that ravaged social media this week due to its resemblance to certain parts of the anatomy? As this one started, I feared SNL was late to the meme party, but Edebiri and Marcello Hernandez found a new way into the joke. It doesn’t hurt that the song itself is catchy as hell.

A quick shout-out to another SNL cast member who started as a stand-up: Sarah Sherman. Just when the Sarah-pokes-Colin-Jost bits threatened to get old on Weekend Update, the two found a way to freshen up the old formula, with Sherman appearing as CJ Rossitano, an audience member who may or may not be Jost’s illegitimate son. Props to Jost for continuing to be the butt of jokes representing the worst of what everyone thinks of him.

The dumb SNL lesson we learned this week for the gazillionth time? Professional funny people like Edibiri make better hosts than pretty ones promoting garbage like Madame Web.