Woody Harrelson hosted SNL for the fifth time on Saturday night, which puts him in the august company of the “Five Timer’s Club.” Good for him! He celebrated the milestone with a rambling monologue that went on for over six minutes. For the most part it was affably meandering. He even started telling a story before taking numerous detours, returning to it only at the end — at which point it was revealed he seemed to be telling a weird anti-vax joke.
Harrelson began by addressing how divided America has become. Calling himself a “redneck hippie,” he said, “You know, the red in me thinks you should be allowed to own guns. The blue in me thinks – squirt guns. So, I’m red and blue which makes purple. I’m purple.”
He talked about his famous weed habit, as well as how he didn’t drink for seven months (then enjoying it again for “five glorious months”).
Harrelson eventually settled on a story about a script he’d read after hosting the show in November of 2019. What was it about?
“The biggest drug cartels in the world get together and buy up all the media and all the politicians and force all the people in the world to stay locked in their homes, and people can only come out if they take the cartels’ drugs, and keep taking them over and over,” he explained. “I threw the script away. I mean, who is going to believe that crazy idea?”
No one laughed at that, but they did at his second punchline: “Being forced to do drugs? I do that voluntarily all day long.”
So is Harrelson anti-vax? Was he just joshing? He’s a pretty kooky guy, so it’s a little hard to tell, although the anti-vax contingent on social media quickly turned him into a hero. Others may have forgiven him by the time he got to a pretty funny send-up of Brendan Fraser’s movie The Whale.
