To be fair to Saturday Night Live, they spent the summer on hiatus, which means there are plenty of hot stories they can't tackle until many months after they were actually, well, hot. So even though the Fifty Shades of Grey casting derby ended over Labor Day, with Charlie Hunnam and Dakota Johnson snagging the lead roles, it's taken SNL until now to get around to parodying it. Lucky for them, the decision to pair up the most unlikely pairs for these fake auditions actually makes it worth the wait.
Let's set aside Miley Cyrus's Scarlett Johansson impression-- girl, you didn't actually have to lower your voice at all-- and the fact that an Emma Stone-Seth Rogen rom-com would actually be pretty great. I'm amazed that Taran Killam can pull off an impression of Christoph Waltz, who I never saw as all that worth of parody, and that the Kristen Chenoweth-Shaquille O'Neal version hasn't already started haunting my dreams. There's something especially fun when you see a celebrity parody you never expected, like Aziz Ansari opposite Mary-Louise Parker, and wonder about how many late-night bullshit sessions it took to bring those impressions to life. And given that half of this sketch is made up of brand-new SNL cast members, there are plenty of double takes-- wait, is that actually the real person in there? (Spoiler: no, it's not)
The real Fifty Shades of Grey, in the meantime, is chugging along, with director Sam Taylor-Johnson attached and a release date of August 1, 2014 in place. You are welcome to pretend the Seth Rogen/Emma Stone version is coming on that date instead.
