It’s official: Ryan Gosling has done it again.
“It” could refer to a few things that occurred during the Project Hail Mary star’s March 7 Saturday Night Live episode: He crushed his fourth time hosting, to name one example. But he also broke his own SNL record with a lengthy monologue featuring surprise guest Harry Styles.
Gosling started the episode with a joke about New York City’s terrible early-March weather, before noticing a certain handsome man sitting up front in the audience.
“What are you doing here, man?” Gosling asked Styles.
‘Well, I’m hosting next week, and it’s been awhile, so I just wanted to watch. Get a feel for it,” Styles explained.
“That’s so professional. It’s awesome you’re here,” Gosling said, looking visibly flustered. “I just wish someone would have told me,” he added, before mistakenly calling his new movie Project Harry Styles instead of Project Hail Mary.
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Trying to shift gears, Gosling grew pensive as a globe dropped down beside him. “Look at this pale blue dot,” he said, launching into a sweeping speech about the people of Earth — until the camera cut back to Styles.
“I’m sorry. Why are we on Harry Styles?” Gosling demaned. The camera operator, wearing an “I [heart] Harry” shirt, moved from a split screen to full focus on Harry. It’s enough to send a Hollywood star into an onstage funk.
Ryan Gosling covered Harry Styles’ “Sign of the Times” before slipping into “I’m Just Ken”
Dispirited, Gosling called off the big musical number he’d planned, complete with alien-face backup dancers. He soldiered on to sing a solo karaoke version of Styles’ “Sign of the Times,” which he claims is in Project Hail Mary.
“And now I gotta sing it in front of him? I love this for me,” he wailed, before launching into a few lines, interjecting “I genuinely hate this!” In a panic over Styles’ thunder-stealing, he backslid into his Academy Award-nominated “I’m Just Ken” for a brief moment just to feel something.
“I promised myself I wouldn’t do that,” he admitted. “God. Do you guys remember when I did that at the Oscars?”
Watch Ryan Gosling’s March 7 monologue above, and watch all of his sketches here.
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Ryan Gosling’s March 7 monologue was 7 minutes and 31 seconds long
Gosling’s monologue was lengthy — about two sketches long.
Dave Chappelle still holds the record for the longest SNL monologue in history at nearly 17 minutes, and fellow comedian Hosts John Mulaney, Nate Bargatze, and Chris Rock have all blown past 7-and-a-half minutes with joke-filled standup set monologues. But as SNL statistician Mike Murray of the Saturday Night Network pointed out on X (formerly Twitter,) “Ryan Gosling’s 7m 31s monologue was the longest non-standup SNL monologue since… Ryan Gosling’s last SNL monologue (6m 57s, April 2024).”
Watch Gosling’s previous record-setting monologue here.
In another full-circle moment, Gosling himself appeared in another Host’s monologue a week before hosting his own episode in Season 49: He showed up to help induct Kristen Wiig into the Five Timers Club.
The monologue was written by Mike DiCenzo, Ryan Gosling, and Jake Nordwind
“The split-screen gag is one of my favorite jokes I’ve written in awhile,” SNL writer Mike DiCenzo wrote in an Instagram story that credited his cowriters.