Josh O’Connor has officially entered his Saturday Night Live era, and he did not come to play. The Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery star made his hosting debut this weekend, delivering laughs, chaos, and a truly impressive amount of on-screen kissing. Frankly, we are not OK.
A Monologue Made for the Gays
O’Connor kicked things off with a self-aware monologue that leaned straight into his reputation. He rattled off his résumé, including The Crown, Challengers, and what he lovingly referred to as “other homoerotic dramas.” He also poked fun at his “soft boy” image and made it very clear he does not want to be cast in a live-action Ratatouille movie, even though he admitted it is “basically a queer love story.”
From there, things only got gayer.
Strippers But Make Them Soft
One kiss came during the “Bachelorette Party Strippers” sketch. O’Connor appeared alongside Ben Marshall as emotionally intelligent, cardigan wearing strippers who reads books written by Black women, supports feminism, and wants Cynthia Erivo as president. Naturally.
What starts as a joke about subverting toxic masculinity quickly turns into full-on chaos, culminating in O’Connor and Marshall having a will-they-won’t-they moment before locking lips. Is this Challengers 2?
Wait, Are They Related?
If that was not enough, O’Connor also found himself kissing Bowen Yang in the “Teaching Hospital” sketch. Yang reprised his unhinged “Doctor Please” character, while O’Connor played his medical student, Shirley.
The sketch follows the two as they attempt to give a patient his bloodwork results. Instead, they repeatedly kiss, derail the appointment, and eventually discover they are related. It is absurd. It’s funny. It’s Bowen again, kissing a Hollywood heartthrob.
O’Connor truly leaned into the internet’s obsession with him, played along with the queer-coded chaos, and somehow made it all feel effortless.
If this was his SNL debut, we can only hope it will not be his last. Until then, we will be rewatching these sketches, questioning our life choices, and wondering why Josh O’Connor gets to kiss everyone but us.
