Adam Sandler Will Host SNL For The Very First Time

Adam Sandler, a former SNL cast member, will host the show for the first time. Image by Getty Images

By Jenny Singer April 5, 2019

Surely, you would think, Adam Sandler has hosted Saturday Night Live at least eight times. After all, the comedian who gave birth to the greatest artistic achievement of our time — “The Hanukkah Song” — is heavily associated with the late night sketch comedy show.

And yet. You would be wrong.

Sandler, a boyish comic-turned-long-suffering-dad-type, is slated to host Saturday Night Live for the very first time on May 4. The beloved funnyman, — even though, “50 First Dates” is pretty racist in retrospect — will make his hosting debut almost 30 years after he first joined the famed show’s writing staff.

In 1990 Sandler was hired as a writer by SNL, only to transition to cast-member the next year for a four-year reign that vaulted him to stardom. Though his time at SNL ended, he revealed years later, with his firing in 1995, he starred in “Billy Madison” that same year and seems to have made out pretty well for himself.

Recently the star of the critically successful “The Meyerowitz Stories,” on Netflix, Sandler will bring his comedy career full circle with his performance in May. He’ll be joined by musical guest Shawn Mendes, a 20-year-old pop star. Here’s hoping for a synth-y dance version of “The Hanukkah Song.”

Jenny Singer is the deputy life/features editor for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

Jenny Singer is a freelance writer with pieces in Vox, the Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Teen Vogue, and more. She was previously a staff writer at Glamour and the Forward, and she’s currently getting an MFA in nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO