Saturday Night Live: How did Travis Kelce come to host?

Saturday Night Live season 50
Photo: NBC

Before becoming a mainstream star and his relationship with Taylor Swift, we got a taste of Travis Kelce as an actor on Saturday Night Live. This was a pretty successful appearance that showed the Kansas City Chiefs tight end as a versatile and funny guy. The American Girl spoof was hilarious, and really just one of a few highlights on the night.

Of course, it’s been some time now since we’ve had a chance to see Kelce on the show, but it is nice to see how it came together in the first place. To the surprise of no one, it is current cast member and longtime Chiefs fan Heidi Gardner who helped to make this work.

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In the Not Skinny but Not Fat podcast, Gardner indicated that she did push to some degree for Kelce’s hosting gig behind the scenes:

“The biggest swing I ever did in that department, and it did work, but it took a couple years, was Travis Kelce … I don’t want to take full credit from the show and the talent department, but I’m just, obviously a big Chiefs fan, and I had seen him do like other little acting gigs and appearances, and I was like, ‘He’s funny, he’s charming.’ I had done the ESPYs with him, announcing [some stuff] together.”

Ultimately, the one condition that Saturday Night Live boss Lorne Michaels had for Travis’ appearance is that he needed to win the Super Bowl — which we imagine was to ensure that there was a ratings justification for getting him on board at the time. Kelce did that, and then the hosting gig happened!

Could we see him come back again?

Given his popular now thanks to Swift, his career, and even Grotesquerie, we do tend to think it is possible once the NFL season is over.

Related Be sure to see some more highlights from Saturday Night Live this month

Do you think that we could see Travis Kelce host Saturday Night Live again down the road?

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