Both Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot and The Big Sick’s Kumail Nanjiani will host their own episodes of Saturday Night Live for the show’s upcoming 43rd season, NBC announced Thursday.
Gadot will host the Oct. 7 episode with musical guest Sam Smith, while Nanjiani will host the Oct. 14 episode with musical guest P!nk. This will mark the first time either star has hosted the long-running NBC sketch series. Wonder Woman earned more than $400 million at the domestic box office, with Gadot reprising the role in the highly anticipated “Justice League,” arriving in theaters Nov. 17. Nanjiani stars as Dinesh Chugtai in HBO’s “Silicon Valley” and most recently wrote and starred in the critically-acclaimed indie comedy The Big Sick.
Smith will be making his second visit to SNL as musical guest. He recently dropped a new single, Too Good at Goodbyes, on Sept. 8 in preparation for his upcoming second studio album release. P!nk’s seventh studio album, Beautiful Trauma, is due out Oct. 13. She was also recently honored at the MTV VMAs with the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award in August. She will be making her third appearance on SNL.
As previously announced, Ryan Gosling will host the season opener on Sept. 30 with musical guest Jay Z.
On Tuesday, NBC also announced that SNL will continue its live simultaneous airings in all time zones as it enters Season 43. Each episode will air live at: 11:30 p.m. Eastern, 10:30 p.m. Central, 9:30 p.m. Mountain, and 8:30 p.m. Pacific. For the Mountain and Pacific time zones, SNL will be repeated at 11:30 p.m. SNL” experimented with simultaneous airings last season, when the final four episodes were broadcast in the same fashion. The move came as the show was experiencing a major ratings renaissance thanks to regular appearances by Alec Baldwin as President Donald Trump and Melissa McCarthy as now ex-White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.
The show picked up nine Emmys this year out of their 22 nominations, including wins for Baldwin, McCarthy, cast member Kate McKinnon, and Dave Chappelle, who hosted the post-election episode in November. The series also picked up the Emmy for Outstanding Variety Sketch Series and Outstanding Directing for a Variety Series.
