Inde Navarrette hosts Saturday Night Live this Saturday, October 31, and the promos for the Halloween episode arrived on Wednesday. The episode airs at 10:30 p.m. CT on NBC and streams on Peacock, with Gracie Abrams as the musical guest.
The spots were filmed on the Studio 8H stage with cast member Grace Reiter, and most of the comedy comes from the two of them playing with Navarrette’s horror fame. In one, Reiter misreads the cue cards as naming her the musical guest and steps aside to call her mom with the news, then waits out the rings when nobody picks up. In another, she shows off the Nikki impression she has been practicing, a mangled run at the Obsession character’s voice that Navarrette grades as gently as she can: it needs a lot of work.
The last promo gives Navarrette the mix-up instead. She turns up in a red dress announcing that she has her date planned for Valentine’s Day, and Reiter has to break it to her that the show booked her for Halloween because she starred in the biggest horror movie of the year. Navarrette does not budge. “Obsession is a rom-com,” she says, and when Reiter asks what world that could possibly be true in, she answers in Nikki’s voice: “No, no, no, don’t do that!” Reiter backs down on the spot. It is, she agrees, a beautiful, touching film.
The promo was not the week’s only Halloween tease from Studio 8H. Dread Central shared photos from the week showing Navarrette in a Jason Voorhees hockey mask at rehearsal, lifting it to reveal a wide smile, a nod to the Friday the 13th killer on the one night of the year he blends right in.
Navarrette’s hosting debut has been circled since the booking was announced in September, and last week’s countdown to the episode walks through how the Obsession star got here. Saturday night, the wait is over.