Pete Davidson and John Mulaney used to lie to the celebrity Saturday Night Live (SNL) hosts about how good they were.
The two comics admitted they frequently tried to boost the egos of their star guests by telling them they had “crushed” their opening monologues, even if more often than not they had “tanked.”
Speaking during the Netflix is a Joke Festival, John, who was a writer and made occasional appearances on the show from 2008 to 2013, admitted, “When I was 25, I’d tell Oscar-winning hosts — I’d write their monologue and be like, ‘You’re gonna say all that, it’s gonna go great,’ and they’d tank eight times out of 10.”
Pete laughed and admitted he also told host they had “crushed it”, no matter how well they had performed.
John continued, “They’ll have actor face. They sort of don’t get it, because they’re just an actor. And they’d be like, ‘Hey, was that good?’ And you’re like, ‘No! Do you have ears?’”
Pete, who was a cast member from 2014 to 2022, used to offer advice to the clueless hosts saying, “You’re really performing for the people at home.”
John added,“‘Play for the camera. The audience, they’re just there to help you, but they’re not gonna laugh a lot.’”
And The King of Staten Island actor Pete also lied about the make-up of the live audience to make things easier on the guest hosts.
He said, “I always would go: ‘They’re tourists. They wait outside and they try to win a lottery. Half of them probably don’t even speak English.’ They do. They’re big fans of the show; they camp outside.”
And John, who has returned to host SNL six times over the year, recalled a time when a “very big comedy star bombed,” adding, “his own fault because he was very difficult writing the monologue.”
And even though the guest had been difficult, John still lied when he asked if he was bad.
“I went: ‘It’s bad acoustics.’ It’s famously one of the best mic’d sound studios in the world. It used to be home to the NBC [Symphony] Orchestra
