Aimee Lou Wood turned her turn as this week’s SNL UK host into a sharp, self-aware comeback, using the monologue to mock the roles that made her famous and the sketch that once drew her anger. The British actor opened by telling viewers, “You might know me from Sex Education, the show that took the shame out of getting freaky,” before adding, “Or, perhaps you know me from The White Lotus, the show where a guy wanks off his brother and puts the shame right back in there.”
She then leaned into the kind of joke that only lands if the audience knows the baggage. Wood had previously described a U.S. SNL sketch about her, one that featured Sarah Sherman in a pair of buck teeth, as “mean and unfunny.” This week’s episode gave her room to respond by doing what live comedy often does best: making the target part of the bit, not the punchline.
Wood’s hosting slot came after a timely promo video earlier in the week, and the episode packed in a string of sketches built around British and American pop culture. She riffed on an infamous viral clip of Kim Cattrall scat singing, appeared in an 80s-style pop video as a singer with terrible hand-eye coordination, and showed up as Princess Peach opposite Mario in a Mario Bros. skit. SNL also took aim at Doctor Who, with Hammed Animashaun playing the Doctor and Wood as his assistant, emerging from the Tardis to ask, “What is this place, Doctor,” before adding, “It looks like my HPV flare-up.”
The episode was not only about Wood. The latest broadcast opened with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer hijacking the royal plane while it carried King Charles and Queen Camilla home from their royal visit to the U.S. Starmer realized he could not be removed if the plane stayed in the air, then shrugged off the chaos by saying, “What other choice did I have, do a good job?” The sketch sent up the royals too, with Camilla declaring, “There’s no way Donald Trump will do anything weird or bad ever again,” before admitting she had smuggled weed gummies home in her stomach.
Weekend Update went harder still, covering last week’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner with a darkly comic rewrite of events. Ania Magliano said, “For all those in attendance it was an undeniably terrifying event,” before delivering the line, “President Trump shat himself. Minutes later the shots rang out.” British singer-songwriter MEEK served as the real musical guest on the UK adaptation of the NBC sketch show, which airs on Sky One and streaming service NOW TV.
Wood’s appearance matters because it lands in the middle of a live experiment that has generated plenty of noise online but not yet a neat verdict. The UK adaptation has drawn strong attention on social media, while viewing numbers started well by Sky standards and have slipped since the premiere. Sky has also not put every sketch online, a limitation that comes with being a pay-TV operator and one that keeps the show’s reach narrower than its American cousin. Even so, Wood joined a roster of SNL UK hosts that already includes Tina Fey and Nicola Coughlan, while Jimmy Fallon and Graham Norton have popped up in sketches, and Sky has already named Hannah Waddingham and Ncuti Gatwa as the final two hosts of the first season's last episodes.
For Wood, the night did what the earlier U.S. sketch did not: it gave her control of the joke. Instead of being flattened by the punchline, she took the stage, addressed the old offense, and spent the rest of the show proving that on this version of the snl cast, she was the one setting the terms.