In honor of Kieran Culkin’s first time hosting “Saturday Night Live” tonight, the sketch show dug deep, deep into the archives to find video of his very first appearance on the show. That would be when he showed up in a sketch during the Nov. 23, 1991 episode hosted by his brother Macaulay Culkin.
Why yes, you’re right, that was almost 30 years ago on the dot. You’re all old everyone.
In the sketch, Macaulay plays the childhood version of Rob Schneider’s Richard Laymer, the recurring character created by ’90s cast member Rob Schneider that annoyed coworkers by giving them weird nicknames. It seems even in childhood he was annoying, and something of a bully, since the entire sketch is young Richard making fun of a kid, played by Kieran, who ended up with a wart.
Watch the sketch right here:
And in case you have no idea what this sketch is referring to — it’s OK, it’s only literally been 30 years — here’s a notable example from earlier in 1991 — in January — when rock legend Sting hosted the show.
Ahead of his host gig tonight, Kieran Culkin appeared on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and the two discussed hosting versus acting in the comedy sketches.
“It’s crazy. It’s absolutely insane. It’s been a dream of mine and it’s just surreal,” Culkin said. “Everyone says like, you know ‘Just try to capture moments or something because it just moves so fast. And I like can’t even do that because there’s so much work to be done.”
After giving some hosting advice, Fallon asked Kieran about his childhood appearance on “SNL” when he was 9 years old.
“I actually remember quite a lot from that,” Culkin said. “By the way, it was 30 years ago almost to the day, I had to look it up, my brother hosted in November of ’91.”
Culkin continued, “I remember during rehearsal day, being on the stage and I was with my mom, and Kevin Nealon walks by, and she grabs him and she goes, ‘Oh hey, you’re great. By the way, you’re my son’s favorite.’ And he goes, ‘Oh, thank you very much, that’s nice to hear.’ And I went, ‘Mom’ — cuz I’m 9, kids don’t have a filter — ‘I told you, he’s my second favorite, Dana Carvey’s my favorite.’”
You can also catch Kieran Culkin as Roman Roy in weekly episodes of “Successsion” on HBO Max, every Sunday night.
