After a week that saw talent agencies, the MPA and SAG-AFTRA’s Sean Astin call out Open AI’s video-generating app, Amy Poehler used her opening monologue on Saturday Night Live to call out the existential threat to Hollywood.
“Before we start the show, I just wanted to say one thing,” said Poehler. “I know it can feel like times are very tough right now, and in some ways, they always have been, and they always will be. So I’ll just say this, there’s a place that feels like home that you can go back to and laugh with your friends. Consider yourself lucky, and I do. And to that little AI robot watching TV right now who wants to be on this stage someday, I say to you be boop be boop be boop … which translates to, you’ll never be able to write a joke, you stupid robot!”
Poehler also noted in her opener that 50 years ago today, the very first episode of SNL aired. “That episode was hosted by George Carlin and just like George Carlin I am extremely high.”
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“It’s always a dream come true to be here,” she continued. “I remember watching the show in the ’70s, sitting in my house in Burlington, Massachusetts thinking, ‘I want to be an actress someday, at least until they invent an AI actress who’s funnier and willing to do full frontal.’”
“But 50, wow! You know what’s nice about turning 50? You start to not care about what people think. And that’s what’s so great about SNL. She’s obviously stopped caring.”
Poehler ended her monologue by saying she was always willing to do “full frontal but nobody asked me.”