‘S.N.L.’ Celebrates 50 Years With Star-Studded Prime-Time Special

 ‘S.N.L.’ Celebrates 50 Years With Star-Studded Prime-Time Special

Stage and audience alike at Studio 8H were packed with cast, alumni and other celebrities in a night that was in turns sweet and self-satirizing.

After a half-century of comedy and music (and what at times felt like an equal amount of buildup and hype), how do you at last kick off a prime-time 50th anniversary special for “Saturday Night Live”? Calmly and serenely, it turns out.

The long-awaited “SNL50: The Anniversary Special” opened on Sunday with the musicians Paul Simon (an “S.N.L.” stalwart through the decades) and Sabrina Carpenter (who was its musical guest in May 2024) sharing the stage at the show’s familiar home base at Studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

They exchanged a simple joke, setting a theme that would recur for the rest of the night: Time passes, whether you like it or not. Simon said they were about to play a song that he had performed on the show with George Harrison in 1976. “I was not born then,” Carpenter said, “and neither were my parents.”

“I’m glad they’ll get the chance to hear it tonight,” Simon replied. And together he and Carpenter performed Simon & Garfunkel’s “Homeward Bound,” the first musical number in a night that also included performances by Paul McCartney, Miley Cyrus with Brittany Howard and Lil Wayne with the Roots.

And who else could perform the opening monologue on this occasion but Steve Martin, a 16-time host whose own rising star in the 1970s imparted some needed credibility and momentum to “S.N.L.” when it was just starting out.

Introducing himself on Sunday night as the show’s “newest diversity hire,” Martin reminded the audience that “S.N.L.” turned 50 this year while he turned 79. “But I feel like I’m 65,” he said, “which is also not good.”

Martin said, though, that he didn’t mind getting older, asking, “Do you think these hearing aids make my ass look smaller?” He also pointed out what he called a “fun fact”: “A person born during the first season of ‘Saturday Night Live’ could today be easily dead of natural causes.”

John Mulaney, a former “S.N.L.” writer turned frequent host, came onstage and offered his own reflections on the show’s longevity. “Over the course of 50 years, 894 people have hosted ‘Saturday Night Live,’” Mulaney said. “And it amazes me that only two of them have committed murder.”

And of course you can’t have a Steve Martin monologue without an appearance from his friend and co-star Martin Short (or “the only Canadian who wasn’t in ‘Schitt’s Creek,’” as Martin called him). Short said he had thought the two were meant to host together, and Martin asked him if he had his passport. When Short answered no, Martin shouted for two Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to pull him off the stage.

“I’ll name names!” Short pleaded as he was dragged off, shouting out the names of other Canadian performers.

To conclude his monologue, Martin looked into the camera and told viewers that if they weren’t enjoying it: “Maybe you should get up and take a good look at yourself in the mirror, and say to yourself: ‘What have I become? This can’t be Steve’s fault.’ And ask yourselves, ‘When did I abandon joy?’”