Christopher Walken returned to Saturday Night Live this past weekend to take another stab at pronouncing Foo Fighters.
Back in 2003, the Pulp Fiction star, 80, introduced the band on SNL, putting the emphasis on Fighters rather than Foo.
In a 2017 interview, the rock band’s frontman Dave Grohl, 54, revealed he intentionally tricked Walken into mispronouncing their name to get the most out of the actor’s iconic voice.
“Christopher Walken was the host… he asked us if the accent was on Foo or Fighters,” Grohl told Radio X’s Chris Moyles.
“We know who he is, of course, we know how he speaks. We said, ‘The accent is on Fighters, actually.’’”
The result was Walken telling the 2003 New York studio audience: “Ladies and gentlemen... Foo Fighters.”
20 years later, Walken returned to the show, this time introducing the “Everlong” band correctly: “Ladies and gentlemen, Foo Fighters.” He also played the spirit of Halloween in the show’s cold open.
US comic Nate Bargatze hosted 28 October’s episode of the long-running NBC sketch show.
His performance was praised by fans, in particular, one skit named “Washington’s Dream”.
Bargatze played the first US president George Washington, who tells his soldiers (Kenan Thompson, Mikey Day, Bowen Yang, James Austin Johnson) about his dream for a country with its own “system of weights and measures”.
He then proceeds to mock America’s peculiar systems of measurements with lines like: “We are free men! And we will be free to measure liquids in litres and millilitres... but not all liquids, only soda, wine and alcohol. For milk and paint we will use gallons, pints and quarts, god-willing.”
The skit, which has racked up nearly 1.5 million views on YouTube already, has been praised as one of SNL’s best at a time when ratings for the show have been in steady decline.
SNL was recently allowed to return to television even though the Hollywood actors’ strike remains ongoing.
Anyone performing on SNL, from hosts to cast members to guest stars, is performing under a Network Code Agreement (also known as a Net Code).
This is not one of the contracts SAG-AFTRA is striking, the union has explained, saying: “[The SNL cast] are not in violation of SAG-AFTRA strike rules, and we support them in fulfilling their contractual obligations.
“The programme is a SAG-AFTRA non-dramatic production under a separate agreement that is not subject to the union’s strike order.”
