Paul Mescal to ask "Are you not entertained?" as SNL host

Roughly two weeks after entertaining the masses with a vicious and very realistic baboon fight in Gladiator II, Paul Mescal will wrestle the cue cards, wigs, and pop culture references of Saturday Night Live. Mescal will enter the sketch comedy arena known as Studio 8H to host SNL on December 7. Musical guest Shaboozey, singer of the song-of-the-summer contender “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” joins Mescal with his ode to alcohol, the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems. What we do in life echoes throughout eternity, and eternity knows Shaboozey and Jack Daniel’s got a history.

The episode airs on December 7, following a three-week hiatus, giving us all a break from whatever celebrity impersonation Alec Baldwin has snatched from beneath an actual cast member. SNL loves to throw new cast members to the lions while giving their jobs to celebrities who don’t need the work. Lorne Michaels’ comedy colosseum knows no mercy. We can only hope Gladiator II’s pancake-makeup freak brothers, Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger, will appear at the Weekend Update desk and force a contest between Colin Jost and Michael Che. Our money’s on Che.

Mescal’s turn marks the first time in many years that a warrior from the ancient world appeared on Saturday Night Live. Russell Crowe didn’t host until 2016, supporting The Nice Guys, but in 2009, the poor man’s Maximus, Gerard Butler, got to ask, “What’s Up With That?” The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”-inspired sketch, “The Spartans,” gave the sketch show a reason to compare the sexual mores of the ancient world with the military-based homophobia of the George W. Bush White House. Were we not entertained by all those boys yelling, “Fierce”? ”

Gladiator II opens on November 22.