True to form, Ryan Gosling had trouble keeping his composure during his fourth time hosting Saturday Night Live this weekend.
The 45-year-old, who is currently promoting his new sci-fi film Project Hail Mary, repeatedly broke character in various sketches on the night, which proved infectious for the rest of the SNL cast.
Both he and season 51 breakout Ashley Padilla had particular trouble with a skit in which they played a school principal and a teacher, respectively.
It saw them intercepting notes being passed around the classroom by students. However, as Padilla grabbed the first note from Mikey Day, a prompt appeared on-screen for viewers reading: “The contents of these notes have been changed since rehearsal.”
This meant Padilla and Gosling were reading the jokes for the first time, live on stage, leading to repeated breaks from both actors.
“Okay, don’t tell anyone this, but I came to school early the other day and Principal Wit was in the school gym shooting hoops,” Gosling read aloud from one of the notes.
“I saw him miss 133 layups in a row. After each miss, he said, ‘There’s got to be a way to do this.’ When he finally made one, he tried to celebrate by ripping his t-shirt in half, but he couldn’t do it and just stretched it out really bad.”
Other notes referenced Padilla’s Ms. Perry asking Chat GPT for makeover tips and an embarrassing trip to the gynecologist’s office, during both of which Gosling and Padilla broke down in fits of laughter.
On Friday, during an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Gosling admitted, “I get in trouble a lot for laughing on the show.”
He added that he’s often told, “‘You laugh too much. You and Fallon.’”
SNL boss Lorne Michaels famously prefers performers to stay in character and not break during skits; however, exceptions to the rule are regularly made and Gosling is known for struggling to keep it together.
Elsewhere on Saturday’s episode, “Weekend Update” host Colin Jost skewered Timothée Chalamet over his controversial claim that “no one cares” about opera and ballet.
“Timothée Chalamet is being criticized by major opera and ballet organizations after he said that no one cares about those art forms,” Jost said, teeing up the punchline, “Chalamet made the comment on a press tour for his movie about... ping-pong.”
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