Saturday Night Specials: 15 Great Female ‘SNL’ Hosts

Saturday Night Specials: 15 Great Female ‘SNL’ Hosts

“Women…they’re just not funny.” So we’re officially done with this ridiculous argument now, yes? After Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s Golden Globes performances, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus making the HBO’s Veep a must-see political satire, and new Rolling Stone cover star Melissa McCarthy parlaying her impeccable timing, her way with a foul-mouthed insult and her gonzo physical shtick into a bona fide movie-star career, we can finally put the misbegotten, misogynistic notion that estrogen somehow negates comedic chops behind us now, right? Great.

Melissa McCarthy: Fearless and Funny on the Cover of Rolling Stone

Nowhere has the myth about female comedians being an oxy-moronic term been debunked more than Saturday Night Live, which has long offered ladies a chance to crack wise and crack people up. (Granted, women of color haven’t always had it quite as easy cast-member-wise, though the show is working on it.) In fact, McCarthy’s SNL hosting duties have gone a long way towards establishing her as a comic force to be reckoned with. So in honor of the Bridesmaids star’s cover story, we’re highlighting 15 other female hosts who’ve done wonders with the gig. Some are ex-Not Ready for Primetime Players, some are comediennes, and some are pop stars or actresses better known for their dramatic skills. All of them, however, have left audiences laughing themselves silly on a late Saturday night.

• Drew Barrymore

  The Charlie’s Angels star has the distinction of being both the youngest person to ever host SNL (at age six) and the female host with the most at-bats to date (six times between 1982 and 2009). We’re also pretty sure that Barrymore is the only host to appear in a fake Eighties aerobics video on the show, complete with cheesy leotards and totally awesome blue mascara.

• Lily Tomlin

  Tomlin already had countercultural bona fides and a history with NBC sketch-comedy shows (she did time as a regular performer on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In from 1970 to 1973) prior to appearing on Saturday Night Live’s sixth episode as a host. She was an instant hit with the show’s audience, and returned to host the season premiere of the show’s second year, which included a reprise of her famously nasal telephone operator Ernestine.

• Britney Spears

  Britney Spears is one of a handful of stars who pulled SNL double duty and served as host and musical guest on the same episode (she did it in both 2000 and 2002). Remember: this wasn’t the blank Britney of the post-2006 Spears era; it was the razor-sharp Brit who’d done time in the Mickey Mouse Club and had an excellent sense of comedic timing. “I’ll be back, I’m just going to go down in the sewer,” she announced as she followed Woodrow (Tracy Morgan) into a manhole in 2000. In 2002, she appeared alongside Ana Gasteyer and Maya Rudolph in their hilarious Destiny’s Child spoof Gemini’s Twin. Here, she gets between horny Boston kids Jimmy Fallon and Rachel Dratch as Sully and Denise learn about our nation’s history in her first turn on the show.

• Madeline Kahn

  Fans of Mel Brooks’ movies — and we are legion — love Madeline Kahn for her work on his Seventies comedies, notably her turn as saloon singer Lily Von Shtupp in the classic Blazing Saddles (1974) and the creature’s future shock-haired bride in Young Frankenstein (1974). It’s the former character that the comedienne is channeling in this classic SNL sketch with Gilda Radner, in which her Dietrich-like German chanteuse gives Radner’s Baba Wawa a “wun foh hew” money in the speech-impediment department. But it’s the first-season episode’s slumber-party sketch that shows the host’s complete range, as Kahn leads the show’s female cast member’s through a prepubescent discussion about sex. It’s touching, tender and totally funny at the same time.

• Betty White

  Over 500,000 Facebook fans petitioned to have White host an episode of SNL, and for once, we can thank the Internet and popular demand for giving us something that made us giddy besides cat videos. Everyone’s favorite F-bomb droppin’ octogenerian did not disappoint, working wonders with her guileless post-Golden Girls persona and penchant for making dirty innuendos seem downright quaint. Seriously, we’ll never hear the phrase “giant dusty muffin” the same way again.

• Kristen Wiig

  For a lot of diehard Wiig-heads, the loss of one of the most dynamic Saturday Night Live cast members to ever tread the boards at Studio 8H was a huge blow. Maybe the fact that we were so happy to see the Target Lady and that odd Lawrence Welk Show singer with the baby hands again colored our reaction to Wiig’s return to the show as a host — but damned if her turn in the spotlight didn’t remind everyone of how keyed in she is to SNL sensibility. We hope she keeps coming back as a host at least once a year from now on.

• Emma Stone

  In another life, Emma Stone could have been a regular Not Ready for Primetime Player; we already knew the star of Easy A had a wicked sense of humor, but her two times hosting the show demonstrated a strong comic versatility as well. It’s not every actress who will make out with a ventriloquist’s dummy with a British accent, participate in a stereotypically French musical number and pretend to be a mouth-breathing bridal shower guest obsessed with anal lubricant. Kudos!

• Anna Faris

  The “Lie to Him” sketch alone, in which Faris and several cast members sing a Fifties pop ditty about lying to the man you love, would almost be enough to warrant her inclusion on this list. But the Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs actress has aced both of her hosting gigs on the show, and her rapport with fellow Meatballs costar Bill Hader in this Lifetime Channel game show bit is wonderful.

• Candice Bergen

  The daughter of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen was the very first female host of Saturday Night Live; they were so impressed with the job she did that they invited her to do it again a little over a month later. She’d eventually log in five stints as host, and after watching her play straight man to wild cards like John Belushi and Chevy Chase (not to mention Toonces the Driving Cat), it’s easy to see why they kept asking her back. Many fans point to her “Consumer Probe” duet with Dan Aykroyd as an early SNL high point, but we have a weakness for her “Right to Extreme Stupidity League” sketch with Gilda Radner, in which Bergen fights to hold it together.

• Amy Poehler

  We don’t need to sell anyone who’s ever seen Poehler during her 2001-2008 run as a cast member; she was the dictionary definition of a utility player. So we probably do not need to convince you that her single turn as a host was, of course, a season highlight, especially since some of her old cohorts showed up to lend a hand. Bring on the “Bronx Beat”!

• Sissy Spacek

  Forget the awkward meta-bits about the director of the show “dying” before the start of the show; go straight to Sissy Spacek’s turn as Presidential daughter Amy Carter, a skit about three women suffering from the infantilizing “Gidget’s Disease” (one of the second season’s funniest moments) and Spacek and John Belushi’s poignant sketch about a working-class married couple. You don’t normally think of comedy when you think of Spacek — you tend to think of either Loretta Lynn or someone in a blood-covered prom dress — but she more than holds her own here.

• Maya Rudolph

  “You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone,” a wise woman once sang. Most SNL fans knew what they’d be missing when Rudolph left in 2007, and her numerous cameos in later years simply made us pine for Maya’s contributions to the show all the more. That Maya Angelou impersonation! The return of Bronx Beat! Her Beyonce!!!

• Jane Lynch

  From her supporting turns in Christopher Guest comedies to her role as the take-no-shit coach in Glee, Jane Lynch has made a career out of a singularly sharp-tongued, aggressive comic assault. Her hosting gig naturally took advantage of that, even if the requisite Glee parody felt a little thin; head right to the digital short featuring Lynch and Andy Samberg engaging in a, shall we say, different kind of relaxive therapy.

• Julia Louis-Dreyfus

  Hired at the age of 21, Julia Louis-Dreyfus became the youngest female cast member of Saturday Night Live; she’s spoken openly about the rough time she had on the show, and many of her sketches regrettably tend to get short shrift. (Our personal favorite is her Ghostbusters chat show, in which she utters a gloriously goofy line we’ve quoted often: “Do it, and be successful with it!”) Thankfully, that did not stop her from coming back to host after her post-Seinfeld success, and the confidence she exhibits — not to mention the perfect sense of timing she had always had in spades — makes this feel like a victory lap. Also, that PSA sketch is a hoot.

• Tina Fey

  You can’t underestimate Tina Fey’s significance as a Saturday Night Live cast member, the first female head writer and one of the top three best “Weekend Update” anchors in the show’s history. Sure, she was never the sort of SNL-er to do goofy characters or a myriad of impressions — a fact she points out during her monologue when she hosted the season premiere last year. But the 30 Rock star is responsible for a lot of the high points of her nine-year tenure (1999-2006), and Fey’s hosting gigs brim with the sort of smart, biting wit we associate with her reign. Case in point: That incredible Girls parody, which simply would not be as laugh-out-loud brilliant without her playing the confused new best friend Blerta. Simply genius.