LateNighter Spotlights John Mulaney's First-Week Saturday Night Live Sketch Ahead of Seventh Hosting Turn
Ahead of John Mulaney's seventh Saturday Night Live hosting appearance on November 14, 2026 with musical guest Phoebe Bridgers, LateNighter's Jon Schneider published a retrospective on November 13, 2026 examining Mulaney's first-ever aired sketch from his debut week as a 26-year-old SNL staff writer on September 13, 2008.
Titled 'T-Mobile Fav 5' and airing in the Season 34 premiere hosted by Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, the sketch starred Jason Sudeikis, Kristen Wiig, Casey Wilson, and Phelps as the family from a real T-Mobile 'MyFaves' commercial after the cameras stopped rolling. Rather than inventing a new premise, Mulaney had Wiig's mother character demand like a deposition attorney that Sudeikis explain why he sided with his teenage son about his daughter's attractive friends—until she discovers those same teenage friends are also in her husband's Fav 5 contacts.
In a 2014 Chicago Tribune profile cited by LateNighter, former SNL head writer Seth Meyers recalled that Mulaney 'brought me stuff on his first day and, by his second, I was bringing stuff to him, to make it better,' while Bill Hader noted that 'John arrived more fully formed than anyone else there.'
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