Saturday Night Live cold open: A Nikki Haley cameo in town hall

We felt entering tonight’s Saturday Night Live episode that there was a chance for a really interesting cold open. Consider the possibilities! The Super Bowl will be next week, and this means the last opportunity for them to skewer something that is super-topical.

So what did we get instead? Think in terms of a CNN town hall hosted by Gayle King and Charles Barkley, plus also James Austin Johnson as Donald Trump. We’ll admit that we are absolutely tired of Trump impressions at this point, but it did get a little bit better as we actually started to get better when we saw Johnson go off on a long riff about how Taylor Swift being a problem when it comes to both the Super Bowl and the upcoming Presidential Election. The whole comparison to the Midnights album was pretty darn brilliant.

The real surprise of the sketch came courtesy of Nikki Haley, who actually showed up close to the end of the episode and had a back and forth with Trump. We don’t want to get in a major political debate here, but we were genuinely surprised that she showed up, and that she also took on a comment about the Civil War that was obviously planned in advance.

Of course, this is where we should note that we shouldn’t be all that surprised that Haley turned up, given that this is the same show that previously had both Trump and Elon Musk host in the past. They are not afraid of having polarizing figures here and there.

Another surprise in here comes courtesy of host Ayo Edebiri actually turning up in the cold open, something that rarely happens, especially for someone who never had hosted the show before. (She went from this almost immediately into the monologue, which was really fun.)

What did you think about the cold open for Saturday Night Live this weekend?

Were you surprised at all to see Nikki Haley show up? Be sure to share right now in the comments! Once you do just that, keep coming back — there are other updates on the way.