Tina Fey Drops F-Bomb in SNL UK Debut Featuring Reanimated Princess Diana | Vanity Fair

As she took the stage as the first-ever host of SNL UK, Tina Fey raised the question many have mulled: “Why do a UK version of SNL?” The longtime Saturday Night Live writer and castmember answered her own question with her trademark disingenuous deadpan. “Like so many large scale American operations these days, no one knows why.”

Fey's monologue, which used the US show's familiar Q&A format, also pulled in Bridgerton's Nicola Coughlan to ask why it was Fey, not any of the UK's multitudes of acting and comedy greats, who was hosting the show's premiere. Fey's answer? “For this first episode, none of you fuckers would do it.'

This prompted Michael Cera to raise his hand from the audience to ask why she was free to be so profane ('I'm Canadian, it's part of the Commonwealth,' he said to explain his presence at the London studio. “Educate yourself.”). After Fey explained that UK broadcast rules allow vulgar language at SNL UK's broadcast time, he joined in the fun with a string of expletives that would have gotten him booted from 30 Rock's Studio 8H. Will this freedom be a boon or curse for the show? We have eight episodes—scratch that, 10, broadcast network Sky announced on Saturday—to find out.

The cold open was free from profanity, but the cloud of vulgarity hung over it, as it depicted Prime Minister Keir Starmer (George Fouracres) trying to muster the courage to stand up to US President Donald Trump. “But what if he yells at me?” a quivering Starmer asked Deputy PM David Lammy (Hammed Animashaun). “I just want to keep him happy.”

The solution: a “Gen Z advisor” (Jack Shep) who tells the leader that a voice note is the best way to go. You could see what the writers were going for in the resulting message, in which Starmer suggests that like Ross and Rachel in that 1997 episode of Friends, Trump and Starmer should take a break, but I ached for something with more teeth. Then Starmer vowed to embrace America's “wonderful, unproblematic culture,” and the first “Live from London” was shouted out.

The format that followed varied little from the template put forth by the original version. After the monologue came a pre-taped commercial parody, this one for Undérage, a skincare product so efficacious that “everyone will think your husband is a nonce,” which American Adolescence viewers know means someone who engages in the sexual abuse of minors, not someone who only does something one time.

“My skin looks so fresh, my husband can't go anywhere without being hunted by right-wing pedophile-catching militias,” beams one satisfied customer. Before you ask, no, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor did not make an appearance here—they're saving him for later in the show.

“David Attenborough‘s Last Supper” was a promising premise, featuring a slew of deceased UK celebrities. “Using DNA sampling and my own brother’s Jurassic Park technology, I reanimated some of history’s greatest Britons for one night only so I can ask them what really makes Britain great,” said Attenborough (Fouracres, again), whose brother Richard played park creator John Hammond in the 1993 film. “This is David Attenborough’s Last Supper.”

His selects include Princess Diana (Shep in female drag, netting the sketch's biggest laugh when revealed) as well as Winston Churchill, Isaac Newton, Mary Seacole, Benjamin Zephaniah, Freddy Mercury, Elizabeth I, Cilla Black and Agatha Christie (Fey), all alive for only an hour. As opposed to answering Attenborough's question, however, the group just bickers over their appetizer order. For a very long five minutes.

The next sketch might have been the most solid of the night (sadly, it's not available on YouTube yet, or it would be embedded here.) In it, Shep and Fey are the stars of Hot Streak, an action film they're promoting in one of those tediously awkward junket interview shows (this one called 'Boovies') After the interviewer (Animashaun) did the usual obsequious and brown-nosing intero, he told the stars that the film they're promoting “fucking sucked.” As Fey's and Shep's faces drop, Animashaun continues. “It sucked. All the way through. What happened?” Watching the actors stumble through the interview, as Animashaun continued to tear the movie apart, was a breath of fresh air in a room that had gotten a bit stuffy.

The grind returned in another pre-tape about a mythical office of people who seek to make the internet as bad as possible with, it appears, pop-up ads. I checked, they have ad-blockers in the UK, so the point of this one evaded me.

Fey then returned to the screen as a doctor in a maternity ward dispatched to treat parents-to-be whose labor has inexplicably slowed. “I'm sorry to tell you that your baby isn't shy. He's pretending to be shy for attention,” she announces, as the infant (Larry Dean) capered about on an ultrasound screen.

“Unless you want your son to become a grown man who is addicted to canceling plans, let me do my goddamned job,” Fey continued, before picking up a megaphone and shouting into the mother's birth canal. “Honey, are you the diamond from my wedding ring? Because you are fake as hell and we can see right through you, okay?”

A threat to leave the baby behind while the rest head out to karaoke finally gets the labor back on track. Things end with all the sketch's members dancing to Naughty by Nature's “Hip Hop Hooray,” which after Jurassic Park is the second 1993-vintage allusion of the night.

And then it was time for Weekend Update, anchored by Ania Magliano and Paddy Young. Up for skewering: influencers with cheap Turkish dental work, the rape allegations against Donald Trump, and—at last—the arrest of the former Prince Andrew. (We should note here that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has consistently denied any wrongdoing.)

“Renovations to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s new home, Marsh Farm, have been taking place over the last month, including the installation of Sky TV. So, if you’re watching Andrew, hello!” Magliano said. “You’re not gonna like this next bit. Also, I'm older than I look.'

“Andrew’s new residence, Marsh Farm, is of course named after the nearby marsh where his body will be found,' Magliano continued, before handing things over to Young. “It was reported this week that the police investigation into Andrew is set to widen. The big question now is, if Andrew is charged, found guilty and put in prison, will he be able to keep his mouth shut? I hope not, said his cellmate’s penis.” The audience, which seemed with them until now, reacted uneasily to that last bit. The segment wrapped soon after, without the US-style addition of guests or commentators.

“The Tempest was a hit,” William Shakespeare tells his wife (Fey) in the next sketch, as he returns home from his theatrical success. “Doth thou not think I appear changed?” he asks, before announcing “I got a cunty little earring!” On his next return, post-Macbeth, he added “a slutty little chain” around his neck; on a third return he was a 1990's-coded hipster slightly updated with a Lime scooter and some 2010s slang. “Cunty” gets thrown around a lot, and Hamnet—spoiler alert—collapses, before the sketch ends in another dance break, this time to Rhianna's 2011 hit We Found Love. After a night that seemed obsessed with the 1990s, an upgrade, I guess?

Another encouraging pretape brought Fey back in, this time as the spokesperson for a “Live Paddington Bear Experience” that involved an actual bear. “He doesn't like marmalade,” one traumatized guest said, holding up two bloody stumps. “He likes human hands.'

The evening was almost over when Fey pulled out her standard body hate moves in a sketch in which her character gets a bra fitting. Sensing her insecurity, the shopworker hollers complimentary things about Fey's breasts over the fitting room door, enough of a boost that Regé-Jean Page—in the night's only non-monologue cameo—emerged to ask Liz Lemon, I mean Fey for a drink.

The final sketch of the night felt very much like a Saturday Night Live 12:55 offering, and I mean that in a good way. “What kind of Irish is your grandad?' asked Fouracres, arguably the MVP of the first episode. The sketch, a very niche but extremely sharp evisceration of people who make dubious claims about their Irish heritage, was laden with UK-specific cultural references and snark. It felt exciting and authentically its own, as opposed to a pale copy of a foreign product. Let's see more of that sketch's piercing and specific wit, SNL UK. The world doesn't need any more dancing babies.

SNL UK is available to watch in the UK via Sky and the NOW streaming service. In the US, it is expected to be available on Peacock at an as-yet announced time every Sunday.

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