Posted in: NBC, Opinion, Peacock, TV, TV | Tagged: snl, taylor swift

Does Taylor Swift Have an SNL 51 Premiere Performance on "STANDBY"?

Could this weekend's SNL Season 51 premiere (with Bad Bunny and musical guest Doja Cat) include an appearance/performance from Taylor Swift?

At the end of August, we argued that having Taylor Swift host the premiere of NBC's Saturday Night Live Season 51 on October 4th made perfect sense for any number of reasons—especially with The Life of a Showgirl dropping tonight at midnight. The theory was pretty much crushed when SNL announced that Bad Bunny would host, with Doja Cat as the musical guest (a great duo to start the season, by the way). But since that time, a slight glimmer of hope has gotten a bit brighter. We know that Swift will spend some time in the other corners of NBC's late-night line-up next week: The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on Monday and Late Night with Seth Meyers on Wednesday. Then, there's that post from Taylor Nation (Swift's stage crew), which offered a rundown of Swift's publicity schedule for the album for the next five days – and that's when things get interesting.

If you check the column "SAT 10/4," there are two things listed: "THE OFFICIAL RELEASE PARTY OF A SHOWGIRL IN THEATERS" and "STANDBY" – with that last listing getting a whole lot of folks thinking that Swift could make an SNL appearance of some kind. We have a feeling that EP Lorne Michaels wouldn't mind tabling a sketch or two to make time on the schedule for Swift's performance (we wouldn't want Doja Cat to have to give up one of her two spots). Would it be live, or something filmed earlier in the day specifically for SNL? Would Swift have time for a sketch or two? It will be interesting to see how this all plays out – stay tuned!

During the 77th Emmy Awards red carpet, SNL EP Lorne Michaels spoke with Entertainment Tonight's Nischelle Turner about the recent changes. "The show has always brought people in from different ages and different generations, and it's how it revives itself," Michaels explained. "It's always hard when people leave, but there's a time for that, and our audience has always stayed relatively young, and more so now with TikTok," Michaels added, pointing to how SNL has had a long tradition of cast changes, and that while it can be painful, it's also one of the main reasons why the long-running late-night sketch comedy series has lasted as long as it has. "Change is good. The people we're bringing in, I'm really excited about." You can check out the exchange in the video above, where Michaels also discusses what it was like working on SNL50 for two years.

NBC's SNL Season 51 cast includes Michael Che, Mikey Day, Andrew Dismukes, Chloe Fineman, Marcello Hernandez, James Austin Johnson, Colin Jost, Sarah Sherman, Kenan Thompson, and Bowen Yang, along with current featured players Ashley Padilla and Jane Wickline. Joining them are newcomers Ben Marshall, Tommy Brennan, Jeremy Culhane, Kam Patterson, and Veronika Slowikowska.

New writers for this season include actor-writer Jack Bensinger (Rap World), stand-up comedian Jo Sunday (Just for Laughs), comic Maddie Wiener (The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon), actor and writer Rachel Pegram (Harley Quinn), writer-comedian Claire McFadden (Second City), Maxwell Gay (The Harvard Lampoon), and Tucker Flodman (The Harvard Lampoon).

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