Saturday Night Live Cold Open Features Will Ferrell as Jeffrey Epstein Ghost Targeting Trump Cabinet
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Saturday Night Live took aim at Donald Trump and his cabinet members in a cold open featuring Will Ferrell as the ghost of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
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The Guardian CultureThe penultimate episode of Saturday Night Live’s 51st season opens in a quiet bar in Washington DC. Secretary of war Pete Hegseth (Colin Jost) bursts in for his usual, a shot of beer dropped in a pint of whiskey (“a reverse Irish car bomb”). He’s happy to be some place he won’t run into anyone from work since, “none of Trump’s people like drinking as much as I do.”
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It’s a little disappointing that SNL didn’t give Ferrell more one-on-one screentime with a couple of cast members – namely Sherman and Padilla – whose eccentric comic stylings are often reminiscent of his own. Still, his reliably strong hosting, the great prank that opened the show, a handful of delightful cameos, and two killer performances from McCartney combine to make this an above average close to an above average season. The new cast is really coming into their own, so it will be interesting to see what Saturday Night Live’s 52nd season will look like.
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The cold open featured Weekend Update host Colin Jost as Hegseth, guest host Matt Damon reprising his role as Kavanaugh, and special guest Aziz Ansari appearing as Patel at Martin's Tavern in Georgetown, Washington, D.C.
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NYT ArtsOn ‘S.N.L.’, Brett Kavanaugh, Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth Walk Into a Bar Matt Damon and Aziz Ansari return to roles they have played on “Saturday Night Live” alongside Colin Jost, in an episode hosted by Damon.
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Independent claims that didn't surface elsewhere in our corpus. Treat as supplementary — not corroborated across outlets.
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01 The Guardian Culture Epstein shows Trump visions of the future: Kristi Noem (Ashley Padilla) is hawking vacuum cleaners on informercials (“The best way to clean up that mess your dog made, besides a gun … it can even handle balloon scraps left over from when your husband’s giant balloon breasts popped”), while Pete Hegseth (Colin Jost) and Kash Patel (Aziz Ansari) are hosting a booze-soaked podcast following the end of the Iran war (“We came in second”).
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02 NYT Arts What the Dickens? Will Ferrell Plays Ghost of Epstein on ‘S.N.L.’ Season Finale Ferrell, the “Saturday Night Live” alum, appears with James Austin Johnson as President Trump in a sendup of “A Christmas Carol.” Paul McCartney provides the music.
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03 Newsweek In the skit, a chain-clad Jeffrey Epstein, wearing a gray prison uniform, wakes his “homey” Donald Trump—played by James Austin Johnson—from a nap in the Oval Office and tells the president he can show him visions of the future, to which Trump responds, “Wow, I’m surprised there is one.”
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