Modern Family star Sofia Vergara started her Saturday Night Live hosting duties by acknowledging two things she thought might be on viewers’ minds: her Colombian accent and her comely figure.
“Forgive me if you cannot understand what I say,” she said during her opening monologue, “and I will forgive you for staring at my chest the whole night.”
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Vergara embraced her accent, saying it could make anything sound sexy. She demonstrated this power by saying a few particularly unsexy words: gonorrhea, Rick Santorum and New Jersey.
Vergara’s accent wasn’t a liability during the episode, which saw her primarily playing South American characters. An exception came early in the night, when she did a pretty decent Fran Drescher during an installment of Bein’ Quirky with Zooey Deschanel.
Vergara also appeared as a correspondent during a parody of The Hunger Games, which featured Bill Hader as Games character Caesar Flickerman and Fred Armisen as Claudius Templesmith.
In a role reminiscent of Elizabeth Banks’ Games character Effie Trinket, Vergara plays a self-obsessed Capitol TV broadcaster. She is on location in the Games arena, pulling contestants from hiding spots left and right. Each young contestant she reveals promptly dies by a competitor’s hand. That pattern ends when Vergara’s character meets Katniss Everdeen, whom Vergara presses for details about her lovelife. Does Peeta mind that Katniss has a boy back in District 12?
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Katniss resolves the situation by sharing some special berries with the oblivious broadcaster. Hader closes the segment with this tagline:
“The Hunger Games is brought to you by Tylenol. ‘Spear in your head?’ Tylenol.”
SNL is new next week, with host Josh Brolin and musical guest Gotye.
