Just days after an Australian media blitz, Saturday Night Live UK (SNL UK) star Ania Magliano made headlines around the globe for describing comedian Shane Gillis as a “fucking cunt” following his stint guest-hosting the US version of Saturday Night Live (SNL).
Magliano and her Weekend Update co-host Paddy Young zoomed into Australia to discuss their newfound fame after segments and sketches from their show’s first season went viral through social media feeds everywhere. Screened in Australia by HBO Max, the show has regularly appeared in the platform’s Top 10 most-watched shows.
The pair were beaming in from separate locations but had quite obviously planned ahead to have matching Zoom backdrops of upside-down rooms - both looking like they were seated right-way-up on wrong-way-round ceilings. A nod to down under media perhaps? But also a delightful acknowledgement to the onscreen comical chemistry they exude at their Weekend Update desk.
Now midway through its second season, SNL UK has regularly found itself going viral since its very first sketch aired live back in March. That sketch featured cast member Jack Shep as the late Princess Diana, and within 24 hours his face (as Diana) was everywhere. Since then, Magliano and Young have regularly gone viral thanks to the sharp skewering of news and pop culture during their Weekend Update.
Already this season, Magliano’s takedown of Ed Sheeran had hit the headlines. It was not surprising then that she directed her comedic critiques closer to home, taking aim at Gillis’ much-derided monologue on SNL’s US counterpart.
Gillis, who described women at the gym as “whores” during his opening monologue, later in the show dropped the “f-bomb” live on air. Magliano deadpanned in response, “Oh Shane, you’re not allowed to say that, you stupid fucking cunt.”
Virality and headlines followed.
SATURDAY NIGHT’S ALRIGHT FOR FIGHTING
It’s been a rapid rise in fame for the Weekend Update co-anchors. Pre-SNL UK, Magliano was best known for almost winning a 2025 series of Taskmaster (she tied three-ways and lost a tie-breaking challenge to Maisie Adam).
Young had previously popped up in cult Brit-com Everyone Else Burns, worked with David Mitchell and Robert Webb on their 2025 sketch show (Mitchell & Webb Are Not Helping) and co-wrote the Make That Movie mockumentary series with Australian comedian Sam Campbell.
Both performers are also certified stars of the stand-up circuit. Magliano had played Edinburgh Festival Fringe to rave reviews and was awarded for her show at 2022’s Leicester Comedy Festival. Young was already an Edinburgh staple before SNL; he also won the highly revered Chortle Award for Best Newcomer in 2023 and has appeared at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
Now they have stepped into roles that have been held by some of the biggest names in comedy. Past anchors of the satirical news Weekend Update segment on the US version of SNL include Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers, Tina Fey, Jimmy Fallon and Norm MacDonald. The US Weekend Update is currently helmed by Colin Jost and Michael Che - now the longest-running anchors in SNL history.
“It was intimidating,” admits Young about taking on such a hallowed role of TV comedy. “I think the good thing is… I think it'd be such a lot of pressure to take over in the States because everyone would miss the people before, whereas I think because it felt new [in the UK] it did just sort of feel like there was very little expectation and initially it felt like maybe no one even in America would find out that we're doing it.”
Well, that didn’t happen. Thanks to the ecstatic reaction of UK audiences to the first episode, people in America did find out. But that wasn’t the reaction and reach that was initially expected.
When the news of a British version of SNL was first announced in April 2025, the backlash was swift and frenzied. Social media users couldn’t post eyeball emojis fast enough, and the show’s producers were greeted with headlines screaming “Doomed For Failure” and “Couldn’t Have Picked A Worse Moment…”. Then there were the think pieces, like the Guardian’s “Saturday Night Live Lost Its Bite Long Ago, And It’s Unlikely To Find It On British TV”.
The negativity was unrelenting, but Magliano insists it didn’t overwhelm them. “I think the thing that is, what was slightly like a shield from it was the fact that so many people work on SNL UK, like it's such a big production. Me and Paddy are obviously like, we're already like two, it's not like one of us is doing it solo, which I think would have been a lot tougher.
“We have the Weekend Update team, we then have like a wider team of the cast, a wider team of the cast and all the writers, all the production crew, like it's a huge amount of people working on it. And, I think when you feel like such a big team with so many people, and you look like, looking around in the early days, it's like there were so many really like fantastic people from comedy involved behind the scenes and in front of camera, and I think that really made the negativity feel quite far back.
“I don't really know how to explain it, but it just felt like the negativity was kind of like, we were shielded from it just because of the sheer amount of people involved that we could kind of like rely on and like we knew we were in it together, at least for me. I felt like I could kind of push it out my mind a bit and just be like ‘there are so many great people here, surely this will be okay’.”
Young spun the outcry into a plus for the new project, “Most things come out, and no one even talks about it, so for me the biggest thing was, I was about to do this thing, and there hadn't been a second of it on air yet, but I was being sent articles about it.
“Everyone in comedy had an opinion. Many people that didn't work in comedy had an opinion on it. So for me that was already, like, well this is maybe quite a good thing. When you're getting think pieces written about a thing that doesn't exist yet, you're like, it might be onto something.”
SATURDAY NIGHT LOVE
The backlash dissipated almost the millisecond the show first went to air on 21 March this year, with no less a host than SNL US alumni Fey herself and musical guest Wet Leg. Social media posts were gushing, reviewers were tripping over themselves to be the first to shower the show with praise, and conservative media seemed happy to have a new source to feed their rage-baiting habit (GB News regularly attacks the show).
“I think the response to the first episode was crazy,” recalls Magliano. “I don't know about you, Paddy, but I just got a lot of messages from people I know being like ‘That was great.’ It felt like, at least, a lot of people in the comedy scene were really supportive of it. Which, I think, is quite a relief when all your co-workers who could be like ‘Oh, this is really cringe and embarrassing’ were like ‘That was really good’ and like ‘You guys did great.’ It really felt like… oh okay, that's good then. If other comedians like it, then it can't be that bad.”
As reactions to the show completely flipped, sketches and political impersonations from SNL UK began spreading across the internet: a Traitors spoof with Riz Ahmed and a giant crab man gained traction on Reels and TikTok, an anti-aging cream parody with Fey was everywhere, and a skit of President Trump (a cameo by US SNL star James Austin Johnson) wanting to job swap with the UK PM (George Fouracres) has garnered 3.8 million views on YouTube since first airing mid-October.
And beyond airing on the UK’s Sky One, SNL UK now also screens in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and, in SNL’s spiritual home, the United States. As its reach grows, it’s attracted A-list hosts and musical guests: Cynthia Erivo, Amelia Dimoldenberg, Jeff Goldblum, Hannah Waddingham, Aimee Lou Wood, Jack Whitehall, Wolf Alice, CMAT and Foo Fighters.
After being asked if he’s aware when his segments are being clipped and blowing up online, Young reaches behind and lifts up what looks like a small Faraday Box toward the camera. “I’ve got this. This is like a physical box you've got to put your phone in,” he says, modelling the mini-safe. “It's got a timer on it, and then you can only get in it at certain times.
“You have to be on it for some things, but if there's some way to not have access to it, that would kind of be great. But, you know, it's kind of like looking into the mirror too long; you know you've got to, we have to use it, but then also like you try and stick it away. I'd say you're probably better than me, Ania, maybe, I don't know.”
Magliano laughs, “I don't know… I feel like I went through a cycle with it where, at the beginning of the first season, I really looked a lot, and I read a lot of the comments, and it wasn't good. It's not helpful to read that sort of thing, and then in the break we had a week off, and I kind of got some perspective, and I was like, ‘What am I doing? I need to not do that.’
“And then I stopped reading the comments or, like, I would look at how the clips were doing and stuff because you know it's nice to see that people are engaging with it, but I wouldn't like go through until I found the pieces of criticism that I could like fixate on for the rest of my day.”
And now the SNL UK cast find themselves newsworthy celebrities. Earlier this year, when Young had an accident with a sword (belonging to pal Campbell) and ended up in an emergency department, he found it being reported by news media.
“Yeah, the hand thing was a test to see, ‘Have I made it?’ jokes Young. “Thank God, thank God I pulled it off. I'd have been really sad if I'd purposefully cut my hand with a samurai sword and then no one wrote an article about it online.”
He quickly adds, “Thanks to your people for bringing Sam Campbell over, you can have him back anytime you want.”
Mostly though Young says, the media coverage passes him by, “I mean I only get this from my aunt, that's how I find out about any of this stuff. I sort of forget that I'll do a radio show and then my aunt will post it on a WhatsApp group with 30 family members and I'll go ‘Yeah, I did do that.’ Other than that, I don't know.”
SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER
One of the highlights of SNL UK’s two series so far is the chemistry Magliano and Young have developed co-anchoring Weekend Update. Young’s coy reactions downplay the caustic nature of the punchlines he’s delivering while Magliano’s ‘if you know, you know’ smile at the end of a joke somehow plunges the knife deeper. Their stand-up styles couldn’t be further apart, yet somehow, on-screen they look like they’ve been working as a team for a lifetime.
Young explains how the pairing came about, “I mean, we screen tested for Update in pairs with other comedians and with each other. Ania and I knew each other and liked each other and gigged together. But we do have different styles, but I think it did just work. It did just work straight away. We did a little bit of writing together before we did our screen test, which maybe other people didn't do so much, and I think it just sort of… I think there was a natural chemistry, and that's quite a great thing to go from.
“I think generally I remember, even with the cast in general, I remember the first time they did a photo shoot of all of us together, and it did just sort of, it did feel right the moment we saw that of all of us, don't you think?”
“Yeah,” agrees Magliano, “because it's funny because you kind of forget that the people who are casting it, you know, they've done this their whole lives. And they've done it for the American shows, and they're so experienced, and they're looking out for stuff that, I guess, we don't even know what they're looking out for.
“But it did feel, I don't know, it's funny; I just think we just got along. So you're not really thinking about it in terms of, like, oh, how would our chemistry work in the context of Weekend Update and the type of jokes that Weekend Update needs to do in the balance. I think we were just like, ‘Oh, that was fun to do that together.’ Which maybe is what creates the chemistry in a way. It's just like being able to just have fun.”
Young jumps in, “And I'll tell you this, there were people that screen tested that day, who would have been more work.”
Magliano quickly adds, “And their names are…”
The pair laugh, happy that they’ve managed to crack each other up.
And, in that week before Magliano’s Gillis punchline bounces around the globe, she ponders the consequences of her Update targets, “I do think sometimes you're like, ‘Well, there's no turning back now’… It's literally gone out. But you have to sit in that and own it.”
Young backs his co-anchor up, “Yeah, but sometimes I go to bed, and the last thought is, ‘Did we go far enough?’”
SNL UK is available now, only on HBO Max.
