'Star Wars' Star Adam Driver to Host 'Saturday Night Live' Season Premiere

Saturday Night Live returns for its 44th season on September 29th and will be hosted by Star Wars [...]

By Patrick Cavanaugh

Saturday Night Live returns for its 44th season on September 29th and will be hosted by Star Wars actor Adam Driver and will feature Kanye West as the musical guest.

The season premiere will be Driver's second time hosting the show while it will be West's seventh time performing on the sketch series.

Since its debut in 1977, the Star Wars saga has been a popular subject to satirize in sketch comedy, especially for Saturday Night Live, which was in its infancy in the late-'70s. That trend continues to this day, with Driver previously starring in one of the most memorable send-ups of the saga in "Undercover Boss: Starkiller Base."

Bobby Moynihan co-wrote and co-starred in the sketch, featuring Driver playing Kylo Ren as he pretends to be a lowly radar technician named "Matt" who hopes to discover what employees really think of their boss, Kylo Ren.

"It's the best," Moynihan previously recalled of the experience to The Star Wars Show. "We were so excited to have Adam Driver come in that week, he could not have been cooler, it was just the best. Just watching him getting into Kylo Ren. Right before one of the shots, he was like, 'Can I have a second?' and started punching himself in the stomach in the corridor and I was like, 'That is the coolest thing in the world.'"

This wasn't Moynihan's only Star Wars pitch for Saturday Night Live, as he detailed another concept featuring two Stormtroopers cleaning up after Han Solo's death at the hands of Kylo.

"I had an idea that we thankfully didn't do where me and Taren (Killam) were two Stormtroopers who were just sweeping up and then Han Solo's body fell and we were just like, 'We just cleaned,'' Moynihan admitted. "And we were just looking at this pile of mess and going, 'Wow, that's a nice blaster, that's pretty iconic.' Just saying lots of stuff like that. We didn't do that one, thank god."

Driver is currently in the middle of filming Star Wars: Episode IX, though with the SNL appearance looming over the horizon, it's possible that he will have wrapped shooting in time for the season premiere. Tune in to the season premiere on September 29th and see Episode IX in December of 2019.

Are you looking forward to checking out the season premiere? Let us know in the comments below or hit up @TheWolfman on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!

[H/T Twitter, nbcsnl]

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