EXCLUSIVE: As the UK version of Saturday Night Live comes together, Jimmy Fallon has given the British show’s would-be stars some sage advice.
“If you get lucky and get cast, I would just focus on the show,” he told Deadline when asked what he would tell UK comics who are in line for an SNL gig. “Don’t think about the next move, or if you are going to be a movie star from this. Don’t treat it as a launching pad, treat it as the end game. This is the prize: Saturday Night Live UK. If you concentrate and make that show the best, and be the best performer on that show, other things will come, but that’s a different conversation. Treat it like the destination that it is.”
Sky in the U.K., which as part of Comcast is a corporate sibling to NBC, is working on its version of the late-night sketch comedy series. Sky’s unscripted boss Phil Edgar Jones has said he wants the British pay-TV outfit’s take on SNL to bring “chaos” and “noise” to the screen.
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As talent scouts from Sky and the show’s producer UTAS UK scour comedy clubs and the internet for talent for the U.K. show, it is the talk of the town in British comedy circles. Fallon, meanwhile, was on the U.S. SNL from 1998 to 2004 and it was an obsession for him in younger years. He wouldn’t go to parties as a youngster until the end credits had rolled. “Friends would get mad at me,” he said. “They’d be like, ‘I’ll put a TV set in the corner of the room.’ I’d go, ‘No, I gotta watch it myself, really study it… and then I’ll be at the party at one o’clock.’”
Fallon also shared some practical tips for aspiring SNL UK talent. “Work on impressions, be musical and be up to date,” he said.
Sky’s UK version will be produced by UTAS UK and Broadway Video and launch in 2026. It is set to become the highest profile international version of the show, which has been remade in China, Germany, Italy and South Korea.