Does ‘SNL’ Need TikTok Comics or the Other Way Around?
As part of his Saturday Night Live shake-up, Lorne Michaels hired five new featured players for Season 51, including two comedians primarily known for their hilarity on TikTok and Instagram Reels. Veronika Slowikowska and Jeremy Culhane are interesting enough hires, but there’s still a question about whether one-minute spoofs designed for scrolling will translate into sketch comedy for network television.
It’s an experiment that Michaels has been trying to solve since the day in 2005 when he hired Andy Samberg based on the online popularity of his YouTube comedy group, Lonely Island.
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That was a cutting-edge move at the time, but Samberg had a couple of things going for him. First, his YouTube work involved working with the other comics in Lonely Island, versus the standalone work of, say, Jane Wickline. Lonely Island also specialized in musical parodies, another skill proven to translate to SNL over its 50-year history.
@janewickline
Wickline is the cautionary tale. Her deadpan, absurdist videos earned her more than a million followers on TikTok, where no one was crying “Nepo baby!” about her popularity. (Wickline’s mother was a Michaels assistant.) But her underplayed comedic style, which works great on your phone, didn’t translate as well to the TV screen. Wickline struggled for airtime outside of the occasional song on Weekend Update.
Michaels’ play here is transparent: He’s buying relevancy. Second City isn’t the bastion of cool that it was decades ago, and even if it was, that’s not where young audiences are discovering comedy. At 80 years old, he doesn’t have to trust his gut on what performers are connecting with Gens Z and Alpha — Slowikowska’s one million followers on Instagram and 700,000 fans on TikTok tell him all he needs to know. His fingers are crossed that most of them tune in on Saturday nights.
But the online performers may need SNL more than SNL needs them. Even the biggest TikTok stars aren’t household names, and online popularity tends to skyrocket and then fizzle. For long-term success in comedy, TikTok works better as a launching pad than as a sustainable platform. Comedians like Matt Rife post crowdwork routines not so they can become big TikTok stars but because viral videos sell tickets to live shows.
Last year, Slowikowska confessed to Vulture that her dream was to have a career like SNL alum Adam Sandler. Note that she doesn’t aspire to become Khaby Lame or Brittlestar, monster TikTok funny people who remain largely unknown outside insular online circles.
The show is leaning into online stars more than ever, with each side trying to borrow a measure of cool from the other. It’s a marriage of convenience, but for now, SNL and TikTokers need each other.
