When the Wonka trailers dropped, there was much chatter around the fact that its star—the incomparable Timothée Chalamet who, according to the film’s director Paul King, has a singing voice like legendary crooner Bing Crosby—isn’t actually shown singing one of the film’s barnstorming new original songs, set to be performed across its seven showstopping musical numbers. Warner Brothers has yet to correct this egregious oversight, but now the man himself has—well, sort of.
On November 11, the Oscar-nominated actor took to the Saturday Night Live stage to host the show for the second time the only way he knows how—in a glittering blazer, with that signature Lil Timmy Tim grin, and the unbridled confidence of someone who’s fully aware of his status as Hollywood’s golden boy.
He opened his monologue with a joke about being mistaken for a masked Winona Ryder during his last stint on SNL in the midst of the pandemic, before addressing the elephant in the room: that he was the first performer to appear on the show since the end of the SAG-AFTRA strike, which had brought the industry to a standstill for almost four months. “I do feel lucky to be hosting after the strike ended, because up until two days ago—and I know this is what we were all thinking about—actors couldn’t talk about their movies,” he deadpanned. Cue him being handed a glass orb-topped cane and busting into a rendition of Gene Wilder’s “Pure Imagination” from 1971’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, with the lyrics altered to “…a world of shameless self-promotion.” Sublime.
Also of note in his SNL performance? Shout-outs to Wonka and Dune: Part Two; flirting with audience members; a rap duet; the heartthrob donning bushy brows to play Martin Scorsese narrating Britney Spears’s memoir; and then repeatedly flashing his red underpants to the audience in a skit where he transforms into a sleep demon in the body of Troye Sivan.