When The Rock first hosted Saturday Night Live, #OnThisDayInWWE 25 years ago
This is when we realised The Great One was destined for greater things in Hollywood...
This was where The Rock swapped sports entertainment for light entertainment - and the moment we realised The Rock was destined for things far beyond a wrestling ring.
#OnThisDayInWWE a quarter of a century ago tonight, on 18 March 2000, he hosted Saturday Night Live and wowed the audience and viewers at home with his comic timing, charm and Hollywood smile.
He wasn’t alone on the show - Triple H, The Big Show and Mick Foley also starred, as a big push to promote WrestleMania 2000, which was taking place in three weeks’ time (though we didn’t know that recently-retired Foley would be returning to the ring for the main event.)
And they joined Vince McMahon in the show’s cold open - with the WWF owner getting the big “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”
The WWF stars were supported backstage by the WWF’s chief writers, Tommy Blacha and Brian Gewirtz, who helped the SNL writers with the dialogue for the wrestlers.
Blacha told listeners and viewers of his excellent Tales From The Attitude Era podcast of the power play between Vince and “chickenshit” SNL creator Lorne Michaels in one of the early production meetings:
Gewirtz, who would go on to be the main writer on Raw before joining The Rock at his Seven Bucks production company, revealed on Stories with Brisco and Bradshaw how McMahon began comparing the production of the WWF output to this legendary show:
“Vince I know took a stance at a certain point where it's like, ‘Well, this is an entertainment show on television, and you’ve gotta compare it to Saturday Night Live’, which is, you know, almost at least in the ballpark of the same comp as far as a long running institution of a show that has a revolving cast and a revolving set of writers and has its stars and its, you know, up and coming people and all that kind of thing.
“And his viewpoint was like, ‘Well, they don't just go out and improvise, everything is scripted.
“You need to know what they're saying because the camera needs to know, like, the reaction shots, the truck needs to know, blah, blah, blah.”
And it was also a who’s who among the SNL regulars at this time: Will Ferrell, Jimmy Fallon and Tracy Morgan (with Tina Fey as one of the writers).
The show kicked off with the famous monologue from that week’s guest host, in which Rock says how he “looks like a sexy Rob Schneider”:
He also revealed how he was meant to be in a sketch where he was manhandled out of his seat, but his bleach blond hair made him stand out too much (and was replaced by Rob Fink.)
Among the sketches The Rock starred in was as an effective anti-smoking aid, Nicotrel:
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And before the Scorpion King, Dwayne Johnson went back in time as primate Papa Peepers, helping Mr Peepers (Chris Kattan), to hump a professor (Chris Parnell):
We also caught a glimpse of what The Rock would be like as a superhero, in a sketch where a bumbling Clark Kent kept revealing he was in fact Superman to his colleagues at The Daily Planet (including Jimmy Fallon):
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And it was great to see a cameo from The Rock’s sexy sister… Oh.
I also wanted to mention Paul Wight’s performance on the show, demonstrating his comedic abilities, which we would see 20 years later on The Big Show Show.
He looks like he’s carrying a small child here!
Coincidentally, the show finished on a performance by AC/DC - who happen to be Vince’s favourite band.
I love how Triple H has Angus Young on his shoulders like a kid, with the WWF Title, here!
Despite what the now Chief Content Officer of the WWE said to mark 50 years of SNL last month, The Rock was not the first WWF star to host the show - it was Hulk Hogan and Mr T, almost exactly 15 years before, to promote the first WrestleMania.
The Rock and Hogan are two of only three wrestlers have hosted the show - the other being John Cena.
Johnson hosted SNL for a fifth time in 2017 - with this infamous sketch where he created the world’s most evil invention: “A robot that’s designed to molest children”.
Unsurprisingly, it didn’t go down well…
If you want to reminisce some more, The Rock made a fun video where he rewatched some of his favourite sketches from his previous four appearances - enjoy!
Thanks to the fantastic One SNL A Day website for helping with the research for this article, by documenting this episode of Saturday Night Live in such detail