Charli XCX Was Actually Funny on ‘SNL’

The promos weren’t great. And given the way mass culture has shamelessly glommed onto everything Charli over the past six months, I feared her appearance as the host and musical guest on last week’s Saturday Night Live would amount to an abundance of random Brat jokes, resulting in a text from my dad on Sunday morning along the lines of: “Why does the British lady keep saying ‘brat’?” I’m so glad to be wrong.

Her opening monologue was the only real site of Brat discourse, and I gotta hand it to her on the accuracy of those self-roasts. “You might know me from my album Brat, but don’t worry if you don’t,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with being straight.”

Any given episode of SNL hardly rises past serviceable, and when musicians host the expectations are often even lower. But Charli proved she can do more than just be Charli, your friend who’s funny because she’s bitchy and uncensored, who could go tit for tat with any comedy queen this side of Drag Race. Apparently she can also ham it up in ensemble sketches with ease, poking fun at pop-star kin like Adele, Troye Sivan, and Posh Spice, but also inhabiting clueless women who do things like make out with Shrek and reveal their bestie’s infidelity in song. Charli seemed to really vibe with the cast, and with the exception of one over-the-top skit set in an acting class that sucked, the episode was distinctly not a flop.

A highlight of the night came via an old-school SNL Digital Short. Andy Samberg has returned to play a big part in the show’s 50th season so far, and he and Charli had strong chemistry in “Here I Go,” a Lonely Island pop parody where they played rich WASPs who love to call the cops on anyone who even looks at their lawn. It was a twist on a traditional Karen joke, because all the neighbors they snitch on are white, the self-awareness of which was made painstakingly clear. Charli was revealed as the pearl-clutching wife about halfway through the song, right about when the joke got old in the hands of Samberg’s Vestie McVesterson. “I pay my motherfucking taxes and I’m cashing in on every penny of it,” Charli sang at one point. Honestly, I’m not even questioning why she performed in a British accent, or their weird little underwear outfits at the end.

I also loved the Wicked screen test, where Charli perfectly imitated Adele, Sarah Sherman perfectly imitated Bernie Sanders, and Bowen Yang… well, he did his thing. Charli looked absolutely nothing like her bestie Troye, but I still howled at the one line she said as him, delivered in a thick-ass Aussie accent: “I’m not a witch, I’m a top.”

Even when the sketches were so-so in the writing department, like the Great British Bake Off spoof, Charli’s characters made them just a little bit better (“naughty baking thot” didn’t even seem like a stretch for her). I really enjoyed her minor role as a Jersey-girl producer on a Joe Rogan-esque podcast, where she read ads for meathead products like “Cargo Condoms—the only condoms with pockets.” She wasn’t the focus of the sketch, but she lowkey stole it.

And finally, we need to talk about “Mean Cute,” the Please Don’t Destroy short that was cut from the episode for timing reasons (and shouldn’t have been!!!). This is a really good example of Charli doing a Charli kind of humor—i.e. reading the Please Don’t Destroy boys for filth. This one’s for all my mean girls.

As for Charli’s musical performances, you couldn’t really knock her for just bringing the Sweat Tour to Studio 8H considering everything else she had going on that night. A boxed-in “360,” during which Charli made the stage her runway, felt maybe half-baked, though she was clearly singing live. Even though her performance of “Sympathy Is a Knife” drew from a similar staging concept, the energy felt much higher—like she was giving you everything in leather hot pants, on this super vulnerable song. Bonus points go to Bowen for wearing a T-shirt repping Charli’s Vroom Vroom EP while introducing her second performance—you know he’s an Angel for real. 

Charli’s all well and good, but my biggest takeaway from the night was this: SNL, please give Sarah Sherman a raise for making me care deeply about a horny squirrel widow. Thank you and good night.