List of Saturday Night Live guests

Saturday Night Live (SNL) is a late-night sketch comedy and variety show created by Lorne Michaels. It premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the title NBC's Saturday Night. The show usually satirizes contemporary American popular culture and politics, and it has featured a wide array of hosts and musical guests. SNL features a two-tiered cast: the repertory members, also known as the "Not Ready for Prime-Time Players", and newer cast members, known as "Featured Players." A typical episode of SNL features a guest host, who delivers the opening monologue and goodnights, introduces the musical guest, and performs in sketches with the cast. While the format also features a musical guest, and many episodes feature celebrity cameos, the focus of the show is the guest host. George Carlin hosted the show on its premiere episode. Three episodes later, Candice Bergen became the first female host and she was the first to host a second time later in 1975. Guests who host five times become members of the Five-Timers Club, introduced on the December 8, 1990, episode, when Tom Hanks became the seventh person to host their fifth episode. Actor Alec Baldwin holds the record for most times hosting, having done so seventeen times since 1990; Baldwin took the record from actor Steve Martin who has hosted sixteen times since 1976. Several former cast members have returned to take on hosting duties. Original cast member Chevy Chase has hosted the most times, eight in total. Tina Fey and Will Ferrell follows behind, having hosted six times, while Bill Murray and Kristen Wiig have hosted five times. On December 11, 1982, Eddie Murphy became the only person to host while still a member of the cast, filling the role at the last minute when the scheduled host (his 48 Hours co-star Nick Nolte) became ill. Multiple former writers have also returned to host: Conan O'Brien (one in 2001), Louis C . (four since 2012), Larry David (twice since 2016) and John Mulaney (six since 2018). Musical guests can be solo acts or bands, who perform two to three musical numbers. Dave Grohl is the most frequent musical guest, performing on sixteen shows since 1992. There have been 47 episodes on which the show's host also served as the musical guest; the first was Paul Simon on the second episode on October 18, 1975. The most recent to pull double duty was Olivia Rodrigo on May 2, 2026. The Rolling Stones are the only group to ever serve as both host and musical guest during the same episode, which aired October 7, 1978. In 1982, at age 7, Drew Barrymore became the youngest person to host the show. Betty White is the oldest person to host, having done so at 88 years of age in 2010; several cast members were on standby to replace her if she became fatigued but she appeared through the whole show as planned. In 2000, singer Britney Spears was the youngest person to both host and simultaneously serve as the show's musical guest, at 18 years and 161 days old. Steven Seagal has been referred to as the worst host in the shows' history by Michaels, David Spade, Tim Meadows and Al Franken for his humorlessness and treatment of the cast and writers. Seagal hosted Season 16, Episode 18 on April 20, 1991 and has never been invited back to the show. The cast and crew's difficulties with Seagal were later echoed on-air by Michaels during guest host Nicolas Cage's monologue in the Season 18 premiere. When Cage worried that he would do so poorly that the audience would regard him as "the biggest jerk who's ever been on the show", Michaels replied: "No, no. That would be Steven Seagal." In addition to making cameo appearances, political figures have also hosted the show. Donald Trump, who hosted in 2004 (promoting The Apprentice) and in 2015 as a presidential hopeful, is the only host who eventually became President of the United States. Al Gore hosted in 2002, the only former vice president to do so. Former, current, or future presidential candidates who have hosted include Ralph Nader (1977), Jesse Jackson and George McGovern (both 1984), Steve Forbes (1996), Rudy Giuliani (1997), John McCain (2002), and Al Sharpton (2003). Sarah Palin appeared on SNL in 2008 after weeks of Tina Fey doing impressions of her on the show. In more recent years, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Nikki Haley appeared on the show during their presidential campaigns in 2016, 2020 and 2024, respectively. In 2016, Hillary Clinton appeared alongside Kate McKinnon's impersonation of her. In November 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on the last pre-election episode alongside Maya Rudolph, who portrayed her on the show. The episode also featured Virginia senator and Clinton's 2016 vice presidential running mate Tim Kaine.