Pete Davidson and John Mulaney revealed the exact pep-talk they give celebrity ‘SNL’ hosts after monologues flop—insisting the hosts “crushed it” even when they clearly bombed.
Pete Davidson and John Mulaney walked straight past the “Saturday Night Live” smile and into what happens right after the curtain drops—when a celebrity host bombs a monologue.
On Friday. Mulaney appeared on the former “SNL” star’s Netflix podcast. “The Pete Davidson Show.” The writer and actor compared notes from their time on the weekly sketch show. landing on a routine they both say they’ve performed over and over: telling hosts they did fine after the monologue went badly.
“When I was 25, I would tell Oscar-winning hosts, I’d write their monologue and be like, ‘You’re gonna say all that and it’s gonna go great,’” Mulaney said. “They’d tank eight times out of 10.”
Davidson didn’t disagree—he just described the awkward follow-up moment that comes immediately after.
“Yeah, but then when they get off, and they’ve tanked, and you still have to be like, ‘You crushed it,’” Davidson said.
Mulaney then explained why the reassurances can feel extra strange for the people on the other side of the situation.
“Yeah, they’ll have actor face,” Mulaney continued. “They sort of don’t get it, because they’re just an actor, you know? And they’d be like, ‘Hey, was that good?’ And you’d be like, ‘No. Do you have ears?’”
The clip is available to watch in full through the podcast video.
For Mulaney. the comments draw from years spent inside “SNL” as a writer from 2008 to 2013. where he was part of what he now calls a well-worn cycle. Davidson. meanwhile. joined “SNL” as a cast member in 2014 for Season 40 and stayed through eight years. continuing through 2022 with waning frequency.
The conversation also covered the explanations—layered in after a rough monologue—that Davidson and Mulaney say they’ve used with hosts who don’t want to hear the truth.
They ran through excuses that include the room having poor acoustics (Mulaney says it doesn’t), an audience that doesn’t speak English (he says they do), and the idea that the host should only play for the camera (they shouldn’t).
“It’s famously one of the best mic sound studios in the world,” Mulaney acknowledged about the acoustics. “It used to home to the NBC orchestra, like it is a perfectly calibrated sounding room, but I was like, ‘Bad acoustics, homie. What can I tell you?’”
By the end, the story didn’t land on bitterness—it landed on the bizarrely caring structure of “SNL,” where even after a monologue tanks, the job still includes telling the host everything was fine, while everybody else knows it wasn’t.
Pete Davidson John Mulaney The Pete Davidson Show Saturday Night Live SNL hosts monologue Netflix podcast Five Timers Club Five Timers NBC orchestra