“Hey, it’s good to be here, though it’s … weird to be here hosting ‘Saturday Night Live’ from home,” announced Tom Hanks in a surprise appearance at the start of the historic stay-at-home “SNL.”
The actor, direct from his own personal ordeal with COVID-19, captured the bizarre other-worldness of a streamed “SNL” with the entire cast sheltering in their homes.
“It is a strange time to try and be funny. But trying to be funny is ′SNL’s′ whole thing, so we thought, what the heck, let’s give it a shot,” said Hanks, dressed in a suit in the middle of his kitchen.
He referred to himself at the “celebrity canary in the coal mine” for the coronavirus. He and wife Rita Wilson tested positive for COVID-19 last month in Australia, were hospitalized, then stayed in quarantine until returning to Los Angeles two weeks ago.
Now, Hanks quipped, he’s “more like America’s dad than ever before … since no one wants to be around me very long, and I make people uncomfortable.”
He and Wilson are “doing great” and “hunkered down — like all of us should be,” he urged.
What to expect with the cast pitching in from their homes? It’s “going to look a bit different,” Hanks warned. But it’s still “SNL,” he added. “There’ll be some good stuff, maybe one or two stinkers. You know the drill.”
Hanks concluded: “Stay safe. We are in this for the duration, and we will get through this together..”
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