Ayo Edebiri made her hosting debut on Saturday Night Live and choked up as she took the stage of the NBC late-night sketch show.
“I’m so excited to be here. SNL means so much to me. This really is a dream come true,” Edebiri said, fighting back tears during the emotional moment. “I was born and raised in Boston which makes me the first Black woman to ever admit that. Three days into February and I’m already making Black history.”
Edebiri said she was raised in Boston by an immigrant family, adding she is both African and Caribbean and delivering the joke, “So you know what that means… I’m in therapy.”
The Bear star said she had always wanted to do the show and “once wrote a packet” of ideas to do on SNL. Reading through some of her ideas, she recalled the Black Jeopardy sketch, adding, “So, I wanted to do a sketch called White Jeopardy which didn’t work because it was just white people playing Jeopardy.”
Another one of her ideas was to have a character with a catchphrase, saying, “Hop on to it now.” Edebiri would deliver the line like Keenan Thompson and the Queen of England with a British accent. At the end of the bit she gave the packet back and asked for it to be burned.
Edebiri closed out her monologue, saying, “Genuinely, I am so excited for tonight. I came up in the New York comedy scene with some of my best friends, who I am so blessed to be working with here tonight, and it really truly feels like a homecoming. I think I’ve been up here long enough, so there’s really only one thing left to say, Let’s hop on to it now.”
