Miley Cyrus is both the host and musical guest of the “Saturday Night Live” season premiere this weekend, marking her third stint as host. While her past appearances showed potential, this Saturday's episode promises to be a particularly juicy one, given the vast swaths of material -- both political and Miley-based -- that emerged over this summer.
Here are five of our biggest hope and dreams for the 41st season premiere:
Dueling Hillarys
Hillary Clinton’s cameo in 2008 alongside her impressionist Amy Poehler was one of the best moments of “Saturday Night Live’s” political coverage last election season. With the news that Clinton is supposed to appear alongside Kate McKinnon on the season opener, we can’t wait to see how the former secretary of state embraces her new “SNL” doppelgänger — who manages to be even more zany and maniacal than the previous iteration.
Taran Killam’s Trump
As we suggested, the lead-up to an election is always a big time for “Saturday Night Live,” and with the current crowded Republican field, we expect the season premiere will want to make a splash in the political impression department. Particularly, we’re excited to see Taran Killam bust out his Donald Trump impersonation. How will the "SNL" writers, along with the always-game Killam, manage to top the man’s real life antics?
Miley Getting Political
Miley has channeled politics on “SNL” in the past, impersonating Michele Bachmann in “We Did Stop (The Government),” a parody of her song “We Can’t Stop,” and even offering up a memorable, if not very accurate, Hillary impression. Miley, hows your Carly Fiorina impression looking these days?
And of course, there are all the other impressions we know Cyrus has in her holster: Lindsay Lohan, Fergie, Scar-Jo, and a top-notch Justin Bieber.
Nicki Minaj Beef, 2.0.
There’s no love lost between Miley Cyrus and Nicki Minaj right now, after Minaj publicly called out Cyrus onstage at the VMAs for dissing her in a press interview. Cyrus has yet to respond to the incident, but “SNL” seems like it would be the perfect venue to issue a rebuttal (and it’s hard to imagine the writers not wanting to capitalize on the back-and-forth). Then again, Cyrus might be reluctant to tangle with Minaj again; As a source close to Minaj recently told Hollywood Life, “Nicki’s tired of playing games with these kids in Hollywood and if Miley’s going to attack her on SNL, it’s going to be open season on her Hannah Montana ass.”
Another Hollywood Life piece quoted a source saying that Minaj would potentially agree to a cameo on the show, but only on her terms. “The only way she’d ever consider doing some type of comedy skit is if she annihilates Miley in some way,” the source says. Bring it.
Miley the Loose Cannon
Anytime Cyrus hosts anything, the question is not so much whether she'll cross a line but which line she'll cross, and how far. We got plenty of allusions to Cyrus' unpredictability during the episode promos, when she riffed that she planned to host "with or without clothes." It sounds like this is a discussion that has played out a lot backstage: After Jimmy Fallon jokingly chastised her for dropping the F-bomb on a recent "Tonight Show" appearance ("you know it's live, right?"), Cyrus joked that Fallon looked "like Lorne Michaels in the meetings."
Censors, keep your fingers on that bleep button.
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