Saturday Night Live promo: Steve Carell tries to be a comedic actor again

Today, Saturday Night Live released their first preview for this weekend’s upcoming episode featuring Steve Carell, and a lot of the humor in it comes via how serious the former The Office star has become. While he really cut his teeth doing silly movies, playing Michael Scott, and being on The Daily Show, he’s since become more of an awards contender playing transformative roles in dramas. He’s changed the roles he’s been doing at this stage in his career and comedy hasn’t always been at the forefront of it.

Related SNL video! – Be sure to get some more thoughts on this past episode of the series below! Meanwhile, remember that you can subscribe to CarterMatt on YouTube for some more updates and take a look at our official playlist. We have two new SNL videos every Saturday night it airs so be on the look out for those!

Basically, the promo below for this weekend’s episode is all about this very thing — Carell being serious now and him trying to train himself to be funny again. It’s a ridiculous idea for a promo, as you see Steve try to look at notes and study the ways of comedy again — from silly accents to funny faces to him throwing away sheets of paper that he didn’t even write on. Cast members Aidy Bryant and Chris Redd want to make sure that he’s ready to hit the stage again, and apparently a big part of that is him being comfortable playing characters like Dr. Farts, who (for whatever reason) cannot stop burping. If you’re going to laugh at a premise like that, you are ready for anything.

We’re excited for Carell to host — really excited, in fact. He’s one of the funniest people out there when he’s doing comedy, and there is that super-selfish part of our brain that wants to dream of a brief The Office reunion sketch, even if it’s probably impossible to configure with so many former cast members all doing other things.

The craziest thing to think about is that it’s been a good decade since Carell last hosted the show, and that he’s only done it a couple of times when, in reality, he should be a member of the five-timers’ club. He has much of the same appeal as a Steve Martin, who coincidentally, we would compare him a lot to. As a performer, he has the essence of Martin with the sweetness at times of a Robin Williams (even if he doesn’t have the same manic energy).

This is going to be a fun episode — that much we know, though it’s also probably unfair to coin this the best SNL in years without even seeing it. Carell doesn’t need that kind of pressure! We just want it to be a fun show and a nice way to usher the Thanksgiving Day holiday.

Related News – Check out our full review of this past episode, featuring Liev Schreiber as host

What do you want to see from Steve Carell on this upcoming SNL episode? Be sure to share right now in the attached comments! (Photo: NBC.)