Nobody Is Happy Elon Musk Is Hosting 'SNL' Next Month

Elon Musk will be joined by musical guest Miley Cyrus on May 8, 2021

Saturday Night Live has been getting major props for their list of guest hosts this year like Dan Levy, John Krasinski, Regina King, and Regé-Jean Page, but the recent announcement that Tesla CEO and all around question mark Elon Musk will be hosting the show has many scratching their heads.

Musk, the CEO of electric carmaker Tesla and chief engineer of SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer (oh and one of the richest people on the planet) has been announced as the guest host for SNL’s May 8, 2021 show with the cheeky tagline, “Musk See TV.” Typically, the show is hosted by comedians, actors, and athletes, so this is an odd choice for the show. Miley Cyrus will be joining Musk as musical guest.

When Musk isn’t running companies or downplaying a global pandemic or giving his baby bizarre names, he is a sometimes-TV actor. He made a cameo in Marvel’s Iron Man 2 and made guest appearances on the CBS shows Young Sheldon and The Big Bang Theory. He also lent his voice to an episode of The Simpsons and in several episodes of South Park in the past.

Still, the choice to book Elon Musk on SNL has left many with a bad taste in their mouthes:

It’s not the first time the show’s included people outside the entertainment realm. In the past, they’ve included New York mayors Ed Koch and Rudolph Giuliani and presidential hopefuls like Steve Forbes and John McCain. In 2015, they also allowed Trump to come on several times, a move they now likely deeply regret. It’s also not just that Musk isn’t “in” entertainment, there’s just something about him that makes you say, ehhhhhhh.

In addition to the SNL announcement, Musk has recently made headlines for his plan to allow bitcoin as a payment method for Tesla and because the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it’s looking into nearly two dozen crashes involving vehicles that were usingTesla’s Autopilot technology, some of which were fatal.

It remains to be seen if Musk can hold his own next to the comedic genius that is Bowen Yang or Kate McKinnon. For his part, it looks like Yang isn’t thrilled with the decision either. After the announcement, Musk wrote on social, “Let’s find out just how live Saturday Night Live really is,” and Yang weighed in on Instagram, writing, “What the fuck does this even mean?”

I guess the good news about the show announcing its guest hosts in advance is that people can decide now if they wish to tune in or give the show a hard pass for the week (or tune in to see if he bombs).

I’m thinking no matter how he does, the head writers will have a lot of material to pull from that week.