Bollywood: SNL: Maya Rudolph’s Beyoncé Can’t Handle Hot Ones

Saturday Night Live returned from break last night and one sketch found Maya Rudolph's Beyoncé unable to handle it while appearing on YouTube's "Hot Ones." With Saturday Night Live cast member Mikey Day playing host Sean Evans, the sketch poked some gentle fun at a number of things, with the humor of the sketch relying on the absurdity of Beyoncé ever appearing on the popular webseries.

For those unfamiliar, "Hot Ones" is a simple but odd premise: Host Sean Evans interviews celebrities as they eat hot wings doused in increasingly hotter sauces. It works on two levels. One, Evans is an excellent interviewer with a knack for making everything feel like a casual conversation among friends and he asks incredibly insightful questions, which often feels like a juxtaposition considering the somewhat absurd situation surrounding the interview. But the greater draw of the webseries is that, frankly, no human being, no matter how well-known, can be anything but stripped-down and vulnerable when dealing with a hot sauce so strong it makes one want to vomit (a thing that has happened more than once on the show). Starting out with lower-level celebs, Evans has gradually gotten some huge names on his show, like Paul Rudd, Charlize Theron, Michael B. Jordan, Scarlett Johansson and more.

None, however, have been as big as or cultivated their public persona as carefully as Beyoncé, and the sketch illustrates how hilariously strange it would be to see Queen Bey - or her team - allow herself to be in a position where she could look messy, ridiculous, or potentially embarrass herself by crying or throwing up. Her carefully crafted veneer is part of her mystique; rarely does anyone ever get to see Beyoncé looking a hot mess with her guard down. As Rudolph gets increasingly rattled by the wings, she eventually asks for her assistant (Kenan Thompson) to remove her wig in order to place exactly six ice cubes on her scalp before replacing it, at which point her publicist bursts into the room to put a stop to it. As Day protests they'll just cut it out of the edit, Bey's publicist, played by Ego Nwodim, shoots even the possibility of that down with "I don't want that footage to exist." After Beyoncé says she's struggling "to keep from blowing out my pants on your janky-ass show," that's when her agent (Alex Moffat) steps in to pull the plug and shut the whole thing down.

The entire sketch is a lesson in carefully controlled implosion, as one of the most glamorous women in the world devolves into literally threatening to defecate in her pants on camera, and Maya Rudolph's dead-eyed stare and sweat-beaded grimace of concentration sell it. Of course, it's hard not to understand where she's coming from, as the sketch also pokes fun at the absolutely ridiculous obsession Americans have with craft hot sauces. This is underpinned by the fake hot sauces' hyperbolic but completely believable names, like Hitler's Anus Roasted Reaper Sauce and Devil's Diarrhea Scorpion Sauce, pointing out the absurdity of eating hot sauces that are less a matter of enjoyment and more a pointless endurance test.

Though Rudolph is no longer a full-time SNL cast member, she still appears regularly on the show, especially for her recurring role of Vice President Kamala Harris. Every time she appears, it's a breath of fresh air, her impeccable timing and ability to deliver a completely deadpan comedic performance without once breaking reminding everyone of why she's one of the best Saturday Night Live cast members the show has ever had.

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March 29, 2021 at 05:29AM

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