Timothée Chalamet capitalized on the SAG-AFTRA strike’s conclusion during his monologue on “Saturday Night Live,” using the spotlight to burst into a song inspired by his upcoming movie “Wonka.”
“Come with me and you’ll be in a world of shameless self-promotion,” Chalamet sang to the tune of Gene Wilder’s “Pure Imagination.” Repeatedly in the song, he plugged that his movie will be released on Dec. 15 and advertised his other movies, including “Dune: Part 2.”
“Hugh Grant got that Oompa Loompa dump truck,” Chalamet sang.
After a few verses, featured player Marcello Hernández joined Chalamet and convinced him to change his song to be a rap about having a baby face. Kenan Thompson also joined the performance.
The movie star also nodded to major talking points about the SAG-AFTRA strike during his monologue. At one point he praised the guild for forbidding the AMPTP from using artificial intelligence to make crowd scenes look bigger before cutting to a scene of poorly rendered AI people clapping off beat. The use of AI was a huge point of contention during the strike as the practice of artificially inflating crowd scenes impacts job opportunities for background actors.
This week marked the first time “Saturday Night Live” was on the air following the resolution of the SAG-AFTRA strike. From this episode moving forward, actors, such as Chalamet, will be able to promote their film and television work once again.
This is a change Chalamet excitedly explained by complaining about how hard it was to only talk about his Martin Scorsese-directed Chanel commercial. The series has largely avoided the problem of celebrity guests not being able to talk about their best-known work through creative booking. “SNL” alum Pete Davidson was the first host of Season 49 followed by rapper Bad Bunny and comedian Nate Bargatze.
Jason Momoa is set to host next week with musical guest Tate McRae.
Jason Momoa to Host 'SNL' for a 2nd Time