Sketchy humor: 7 times 'Saturday Night Live' featured a Wilmington connection

With long-running NBC sketch comedy show "Saturday Night Live" airing new episodes in January and February after taking a month-long break for the holidays, let's take a look back at a few Wilmington connections that have popped up on the show over the years. Some are direct, others less so.

"Saturday Night Live," which premiered in 1975, is currently in the midst of its 49th season. Wilmington, which was founded in 1739, is in its 285th consecutive year of existence.

'Karaoke All-Stars'

Wilmington's most recent "appearance" on SNL came in 2021, when the show aired a sketch poking fun at people who are really bad at karaoke. The sketch was set in a fictional Wilmington establishment called Bixby's Bar & Grill.

The events that played out on screen, however, were inspired, at least in part, by some real-life happenings at downtown Wilmington bar Whiskey Tango Foxtrot during a private wrap party for the movie "One True Loves" starring Simu Liu ("Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings"). "One True Loves" shot in Wilmington in late 2020.

Liu hosted "SNL" the week the karaoke sketch ran. In the sketch, he also played a finance bro who uses his time on the mic to brag about his wealth while trying to score a woman.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot owner Joseph Aperfine said several bits from the sketch, including one singer who picks a song that's out of his range (A-ha's impossibly high '80s anthem "Take On Me") and a woman sloppily performing Sade's "Smooth Operator" (singing the lyrics as "Soo Soppa Layla") were "basically a play-by-play of what happened" during the party.

SNL and WTF: Meet the Wilmington bar whose karaoke party inspired a 'Saturday Night Live' sketch

The Charlie Daniels Band

Back in April of 1982, Wilmington native and country singer Daniels, who died in 2020, performed on SNL during the 18th episode of the show's seventh season. Daniels played "Still In Saigon" and mega-smash "The Devil Went Down To Georgia," which had hit No. 1 on the Billboard country charts and No. 3 on the Hot 100 in 1979.

'Party at Mr. Bernard's'

This video short that aired on SNL in 2010 takes the premise of classic 1989, filmed-in-Wilmington comedy "Weekend at Bernie's" to its logical (or illogical) conclusion.

In the original movie, which shot mostly on and near Bald Head Island, two corporate underlings (Jonathan Silverman and Andrew McCarthy) show up to a beach vacation to find that their boss, Bernie (Terry Kiser), has been murdered. Naturally, they do what any, fun-loving, IQ-deficient young men would do and pretend Bernie is alive so as not to spoil a babes- and party-filled weekend.

In the short, which stars Bill Hader and Andy Samberg, with Robert DeNiro playing the dead boss, the ruse has disastrous consequences and its perpetrators wind up up in court ("They desecrated his body! They made him do the limbo!") before coming to an ending both surprising and absurd. But not as absurd as dressing up a dead guy in a Hawaiian shirt and taking him to a party.

'Firestarter Brand Smoked Sausages'

"Smoked with fires she starts with her mind."

In this sketch that aired Feb. 3, 2007, Drew Barrymore plays a grown-up version of Charlie McGee, the young girl from the Stephen King movie "Firestarter" about a girl who can start fires with her mind. That movie, filmed in Wilmington in 1983, is credited with igniting Wilmington's film industry.

The adult Charlie is apparently quite the entreprenuer. The sketch is basically a parody commercial in which "the Firestarter," with help from her burn-victim husband, "semi-professional song stylist Lonny San Francisco" (a sweaty, bewigged Jason Sudeikis), pitches her meaty treats with bizarre musical accompaniment, and lyrics, from her spouse: "Feel the hot grease in your whiskers/ Chin slick like a bald man's head."

'Dawson's Creek' parody with Mr. Peepers

The Feb. 24, 2001, episode of SNL was hosted by Katie Holmes, who at the time was starring as Joey in the mega-popular, Wilmington-shot teen drama "Dawson's Creek," which aired from 1998 until 2003.

A sketch on the show combined a send-up of "Dawson's Creek" (and its stilted dialogue and eye-rolling sexual politics) with a new exchange student at Capeside High: Mr. Peepers, a recurring character played by Chris Kattan who's part man, part ape and can eat an apple in three seconds flat.

Naturally, Joey and Mr. Peepers wind up having hot monkey sex, much to the chagrin of a heavily sighing Dawson (Jimmy Fallon).

Nate Bargatze

OK, this one's a bit of a stretch, but the laid-back comic has said he owes his career, at least in large part, to his viral routine about Wilmington's since-closed Cape Fear Serpentarium. Bargatze hosted SNL in October and was a hit, especially a sketch in which he played George Washington talking about why, in the future, the United States would use yards and miles instead of meters and kilometers.

Funny bits: Comedian Nate Bargatze returns to Wilmington, talks about the Cape Fear Serpentarium

Michael Jordan

We saved the best, or at least the most famous, for last. Wilmington native Michael Jordan hosted SNL on Sept. 28, 1991, a few months after winning his first NBA championship with the Chicago Bulls.

Perhaps the most memorable sketch in which Jordan appeared was "Daily Affirmations." Joined by future U.S. Senator Al Franken as the caring nurturer Stuart Smalley, Jordan — as "Michael J. I'll protect your anonymity" — tried not to lose it while repeating such lines as "I don't have to dribble the ball fast, or throw the ball into the basket. Because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and, doggone it, people like me."

More: With Sports Illustrated in turmoil, here are 6 Wilmington athletes who have graced SI covers

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: 'SNL' connections to Wilmington, NC