Ryan Gosling’s episode of Saturday Night Live drew almost 9 million viewers in the week since it aired, according to numbers acquired by Variety. The episode, which drew 1.7 million live viewers, had a live+7 number of 8.9 million across various platforms, with millions of views assumed to be coming from Peacock, where the show drew its best ratings since the platform launched. Those numbers suggest the episode captured the show’s best seven-day viewership since December of 2021, when Billie Eilish served as both host and musical guest.
The episode also rose from 0.3 in the adults 18-49 demographic advertisers care about the most, on April 13 to a seven-day rating of 2.0. That’s the show’s highest share since a November 2022 episode hosted by Dave Chapelle with the Foo Fighters as musical guests.
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The numbers are dwarfed by YouTube and social media, where the full episode is not available, but tens of millions of people have watched portions or sketches from the episode, most notably the hugely-viral Beavis and Butt-Head sketch.
“It was a sketch that had been put up at table reads and rehearsals for about five years prior to this. Previously, I was in the sketch but as an audience member. I can’t remember the other castings of it. It never made it to a dress rehearsal,” Heidi Gardner told Vulture. “Every so often, because of timing or the stage it’s in, a sketch might be cut on a Friday night as opposed to a Saturday. That’s what happened the time before. I had never seen the costumes. It was a sketch that Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell kept on pitching, like, ‘Before the end of our time here, we have to do the Beavis and Butt-Head sketch.’ It was their white whale; they really wanted to do it. Knowing Ryan is always so down for fun and playful things, my guess is they thought he would be into it.”
Cast members for Saturday Night Live season 49 include almost the entire cast from season 48 of SNL. Returning stars include Michael Che, Mikey Day, Andrew Dismukes, Chloe Fineman, Heidi Gardner, James Austin Johnson, Punkie Johnson, Colin Jost, Ego Nwodim, Sarah Sherman, Kenan Thompson, and Bowen Yang. Featured players that are part of the cast include returning stars Marcello Hernandez, Molly Kearney, Michael Longfellow, and Devon Walker, plus the show’s only fully new cast member for the year, newcomer Chloe Troast. The comedy troupe Please Don’t Destroy, made up of Ben Marshall, John Higgins, and Martin Herlihy, are also a recurring part of the series.
Saturday Night Live Season 49 is ongoing now with new episodes airing on both NBC and Peacock, starting Saturdays at 11:30 PM ET. All 48 seasons of Saturday Night Live are also now streaming on Peacock.
