RuPaul hosted the Feb. 8 episode of Saturday Night Live, plugging his popular and groundbreaking television reality competition show RuPaul’s Drag Race in his opening monologue. He talked about arriving in New York City in the 1980s and joked that the producers of SNL told him he could not tell specific stories from his time as a drag queen in the East Village.
“You’re born naked and the rest is drag” @RuPaul pic.twitter.com/EgYwACvZXy
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) February 9, 2020
One sketch featured RuPaul as the member of a family alongside Ego Nwodim, Kenan Thompson and Chris Redd, who were playing charades against another family, played by Kyle Mooney, Beck Bennett, Kate McKinnon and Heidi Gardner. RuPaul’s family kept cheating by talking during charades.
In a digital short, RuPaul played himself doing a photo shoot for Drag Magazine. “Drag needs someone new,” he said in the sketch. That new face for drag turned out to be the recurring Pete Davidson character Chad.
Chad & @RuPaul pic.twitter.com/TVuLh4aBKp
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) February 9, 2020
Cecily Strong and RuPaul did what appeared to be a Designing Women homage in one sketch where they lectured a couple for unfairly splitting a check with another couple.
A commercial parody played on the game Bop It, here called Boop It. Bennett appeared as a divorced dad who kept messing it up.
RuPaul played himself again in a sketch set in a library during children’s storytime. In it, he taught them how to read, a play on words since he was teaching them to read in the sense of reading someone for filth. “Bear got some busted overalls,” he said of Corduroy.
The Library is. #SNL pic.twitter.com/g4PI0SmfHa
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) February 9, 2020
Nwodim and RuPaul played “thirsty cops” in a sketch where they hit on a character played by Davidson after pulling him over for texting and driving.
McKinnon and Aidy Bryant played co-hosts of a television program called The Old New York Show With Madge and Dickie. “Every apartment was a dollar,” they said, reminiscing about 1994 in the city. RuPaul appeared as their guest.
