Saturday Night Live poked fun at Ellen DeGeneres with a skit involving Jason Sudeikis.
The Ted Lasso star, and former SNL cast member, hosted an episode of the American sketch show for the first time on Saturday (23 October).
Among the highlights were his opening monologue, in which he joked that Ted Lasso’s success was “truly shocking”, as well as cameo appearances from Oscar Isaac, Emily Ratajkowski and Nicholas Braun., who plays Greg in HBO show Succession.
But, it was his skewering of DeGeneres, whose talk show is set to come to an end following (but not due to) multiple accusations of “mean” behaviour behind-the-scenes.
In the skit, he presented Mellen, which gave DeGeneres’ show a “hard masculine edge” thanks to Sudeikis’ host, fit with Degeneres-style wig. In the skit, he described himself as “a man’s man”.
Where Degeneres invites kids on to inspire the world, Mellen (”the male Ellen”) encourages kids to “slap” their teachers.
He also introduced a set of controversial public figures: the character of podcaster Joe Rogan showed up for a cooking segment, in which he cooked wild boar, while the character of boxer Conor McGregor ended up threatening the audience with a golf club.
Then there was Pete Davidson’s performance as social media star and boxer Jake Paul, who tried to set up a match with Muhammad Ali – the catch being that if he won, Ali would have to change his name back to Cassisus Clay.
In July, Rogan criticised SNL for “stealing” jokes, calling the show “a den of thieves”.
