Saturday Night Live scored big with their latest host. According to Deadline, this past Saturday’s episode, hosted by Ryan Gosling (Barbie, The Notebook), attracted the largest audience the sketch comedy show has had in years. With that, it has also achieved a new height on the streaming service Peacock as well.
On April 13, Gosling took the stage to host SNL with the musical guest Chris Stapleton. The sketches in the episode held moments such as the character-breaking Beevis and Butthead sketch are already starting to gain millions of views on YouTube with them gathering 46 million views and counting. The episode itself has reached 8.9 million viewers in seven days according to NBCUniversal. It is also holding a 2.0 rating in the 18 to 49 demo. Not only that, but the episode now broke another viewership record as it has become the most streamed SNL episode on Peacock ever according to NBCU.
This episode marks the largest audience in a seven-day span that Saturday Night Live has seen since December 2021 when singer Billie Eilish appeared as host, and has had the highest and best demo performance since November 2022 when Dave Chappelle (Half Baked) took the stage.
Gosling, who is known to crack a smile during his sketches, could not stop giggling and breaking character during the entire episode. His infectious laugh, carried onto the cast members themselves, adding more and more comedy to the sketches. While character breaking is frowned upon in the comedy scene, in this episode it did nothing but aid the cast in how hilarious these sketches ended up, with the audience meeting the performances with the same amount of laughter that infected the cast.
Saturday Night Live will be back on May 4th on NBC at 11:30 pm EST with Dua Lipa (Barbie) doing double duty with performing both as musical guest and starring as host.