We Bet You $1,000 That Simone Biles Will Host SNL’s Premiere
The summer is coming to a close. Pants are getting longer, kids are showing their friends their new backpacks, and the nerds are wondering who is going to host the season premiere of Saturday Night Live. It’s usually a significant booking, with the gig almost always going to a big star or a beloved member of the SNL family. This year is an even bigger deal due to the show’s 50th season, a milestone so large and round that it’s hard not to think every decision will be significant. We’re now less than a month out, with the show expected to return on September 28, so it’s time to put our chips down and place our bets. We’re not sure where one could actually gamble on SNL host decisions, but there must be a place on a weird part of the internet. Here are our odds.
First, a note on the musical guest:
Fall tours are booked further in advance than SNL books its premiere, so it’s much harder to make musical-guest predictions. For example, Charli XCX, the artist most would guess to kick the season off, has a show in Boston that night. A bummer — until you imagine someone saying “brat” with a Boston accent. What about Chappell Roan? The Midwest Princess will actually be in New York on September 28, but she’s playing All Things Go. Sure, it’s possible her entire band could use helicopters to shuttle back and forth from Queens, but it seems much more likely that SNL is the reason she moved her Austin City Limits performances from Saturday to Sunday in early October. Really, it could be anyone who released an album this summer. Post Malone, Billie Eilish, Gracie Abrams, Camila Cabello, Zach Bryan, Anderson .Paak, Megan Thee Stallion, Eminem, or Jack White all would have the same odds. It could also be Katy Perry.
Florence Pugh +1,000
While the premiere host tends to get special consideration, sometimes things don’t come together, and the show just books someone affable with something to promote who’s never hosted before. A good example is Owen Wilson hosting for the first time in 2021. He was kind of promoting season one of Loki, which premiered in early June, and The French Dispatch, which hit theaters a few weeks after his SNL episode, but neither made it feel like a big deal that he was hosting. Though it’s unlikely to happen this season due to the anniversary and election, maybe every single former cast member and host will have a wedding that weekend. Florence Pugh has We Live in Time out on October 11. She’s never hosted and definitively seems like a fun time. Also, it would be easier to schedule her now than when she’s on a world tour for a Marvel movie. Still, it’s unlikely.
Andrew Garfield +900
Slightly more likely is someone affable with something to promote who has hosted before. Andrew Garfield, who will also be promoting We Live in Time, hosted back in his Spider-Man days in 2014. The odds are still low, but not as low as Pugh.
Lady Gaga, Donald Glover, Zach Galifianakis, or Kevin Hart +500
And now we have our mid-level tier of returning hosts — people who are in the extended SNL family and on Lorne Michaels’s radar, but aren’t fully one of his children. Lady Gaga has hosted SNL once and performed as musical guest five times, so doing double duty to promote Joker: Folie à Deux, out on October 4, would feel like an appropriately big deal. That said, the time demands of SNL might make hosting before the premiere of a superhero movie tough. In terms of other double-duty options, the only time Donald Glover hosted, he did both, and Childish Gambino did release an album this summer.
When it comes to stand-ups who are returning hosts (mid-tier level), Kevin Hart has hosted three times and will be promoting Peacock’s Fight Night. Zach Galifianakis has hosted three times, but his most recent appearance was way back in 2013. That said, his role in the new season of Only Murders in the Building at least puts him in the conversation.
Steve Martin +350
There are former SNL hosts, and then there is Steve Martin, a figure as associated with the show as any cast member, having hosted 16 times since the show’s first year on the air. It’s the show’s 50th season, after all, and Michaels is going to feel nostalgic as hell, so there’s something sweet about the idea of Martin kicking off the season. Plus, he’ll have the aforementioned Only Murders season to promote. For context, Alec Baldwin, the only person to host more than Martin, kicked off the 2011 premiere without having anything to promote. Wouldn’t it be nice if Martin made it even with Baldwin? Also, if he’s impersonating Tim Walz, he’d probably be there anyway.
John Mulaney +300
The first episode of Saturday Night Live ever was hosted by a stand-up comedian (George Carlin). When John Mulaney first hosted in 2018 after working as a writer on the show for four seasons in the early 2000s, it was rumored that Michaels liked the throwback nature of it. Since then, Mulaney has hosted four more times and Michaels has had many more stand-ups without a movie or scripted TV series host the show, including Chris Rock hosting the 2020 premiere. It’s possible Michaels would have Mulaney back; he’s coming off his Netflix series Everybody’s in L.A. and would serve as as a tribute to the history of stand-ups on the show.
Adam Sandler +250
Michaels likes having cast members host celebratory episodes like the premiere, finale, and episodes around Christmas. Since 2000, there have been five instances of a former cast member hosting the season premiere (Will Ferrell in 2009, Amy Poehler in 2010, Tina Fey in 2013, Chris Rock in 2020, and Pete Davidson in 2023), and the 50th anniversary only strengthens the case for a former cast member hosting the premiere and setting a sentimental tone for the season. The last time Adam Sandler hosted in 2019, he performed a tribute to Chris Farley that moved the entire cast and crew. It was the episode SNL submitted for the Emmys that year, and when the show won, Michaels talked about how it’s moments like Sandler’s tribute that keep the show on the air. Sandler just released a new special with an equally sentimental song about the power of comedy that he could perform on SNL to make Michaels cry. This alone puts the Sandman in consideration.
Glen Powell +150
The season premiere of SNL being hosted by the breakout movie star of the summer is a thing. Eight of the hosts since 2000 were first-timers coming off a big summer movie: Steve Carell for The 40-Year-Old Virgin in 2005, Chris Pratt for Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014, Margot Robbie for Suicide Squad in 2016, and most recently Miles Teller for Top Gun: Maverick in 2022. This brings us to Glen Powell, who also may have been considered to host in 2022 after his role in Top Gun: Maverick. But summer 2024 was when Powell definitively went from a face to a name, where not just AMC A-List members knew exactly who he was. Putting aside animated movies, Twisters was the highest-grossing movie of the summer after Deadpool & Wolverine. (Fun fact: It’s rumored that Ryan Reynolds has avoided hosting the show for a second time to avoid interacting with Colin Jost, the current husband of his ex-wife, Scarlett Johansson.) As a bonus, Twisters was released by Universal, which of course is part of the same corporation that operates the network SNL airs on. And if you’ve seen Hit Man, the Netflix movie Powell co-wrote and stars in, he clearly has an interest and ability to wear wigs and do funny voices. In a normal summer, Powell would be a slam dunk …
Steph Curry +100
An NBA player has hosted the SNL season premiere three times: Michael Jordan in 1991, Charles Barkley in 1993, and LeBron James in 2007. In Jordan and Barkley’s cases, the players were coming off MVP seasons and NBA Finals appearances, so it especially made sense there. But really, having an NBA player host is as much about stardom as it is timing. The NBA preseason starts in early October, and the season runs through June, so SNL’s premiere is the only episode where a player has the time to host. Steph Curry is a generational talent and, after James, probably the most recognizable current player for people who don’t follow sports; it’s actually surprising he hasn’t hosted before. Why now? Curry stars in the sitcom Mr. Throwback that premiered this summer, which co-stars a current SNL cast member (Ego Nwodim) and is airing on Peacock, NBC’s streaming service. That’s a lot of synergy, and Michaels is a company man. The only thing holding Curry back is the timing with the NBA season, and the fact that there is another Olympian Michaels would surely ask first.
Simone Biles -575
Anyone who watched the 2024 Olympics in the United States likely noticed a surprising amount of discussion about the upcoming 50th season of SNL. Multiple cast members were in attendance, and Colin Jost served as a surfing correspondent in Tahiti until an injury sent him home. Having an Olympian host the premiere feels like a fitting cap-off to NBC’s big summer. There are many people and relationships Michaels will want to celebrate this year, but at the top of that list is NBC. It’s less about nostalgia and more about celebrating Michaels’s ability to leverage nostalgia to get what he wants — in this case, a giant, costly 50th celebration at Radio City Music Hall. Michaels is long overdue indulging this ultimate NBC synergy, considering the fact that SNL has not had a summer Olympian host the premiere since Michael Phelps in 2008.
And Simone Biles is the most obvious choice. She is charming, self-aware, and high-energy, which are three important traits for an SNL host. She performs dynamically and joyously under intense pressure, and when she’s not competing, she tosses off jokes on social media or exhibits Glen Powell levels of star quality on TikTok. Also, it just feels like her time. After her Olympic breakout at age 19 in 2016, she was on pace to host in 2021, but that no longer made sense after her famously difficult summer (which possibly explains Wilson randomly getting the gig that year). As challenging as that was, it set her up to be even more the focus of this year’s Olympics. Screw Disney World, she’s going to 30 Rock. Biles was favored to win all-around gold with -575 odds, so that seems fitting here too.
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