‘All About Nina’: Mary Elizabeth Winstead Proves She The Chops To Host ‘SNL’

In the new movie All About Nina, Mary Elizabeth Winstead portrays a stand-up comedian dreaming of a spot on a TV series called Comedy Prime, run by a guy named Larry Michaels.

Winstead nails her audition at The Laugh Factory in Hollywood, where she’s up against other women for one spot – her competition includes Nicole Byer and Andree Vermuelen, no strangers themselves to the audition process for the very real Saturday Night Live for the very real Lorne Michaels.

Does she get the gig on Comedy Prime?

You’ll have to watch the movie to find out.

But Winstead has proven without a doubt she has the skills to host an actual episode of SNL.

In the official trailer, you see the 34-year-old actress perform very brief impersonations of Celine Dion and Cher. Roll the clip!

We already knew Winstead was a triple threat – singing in her band, Got A Girl:

And dancing, as displayed in the film, Make It Happen:

But the revelation in All About Nina is finding out just what range she has, just how many celebrity impressions she has in her arsenal. That rehearsal scene in the mirror we saw in the movie trailer? Winstead’s Nina also whips out her vocal spins on Sia, Shakira, Eddie Vedder and Brendan Fraser.

And yet, in her audition scene, she only utilizes her Shakira impression, as part of a medley scene, imagining several famous people ordering a smoothie. Among them? Bjork, Kristen Stewart, Shelly Duvall (from The Shining) and director Werner Herzog.

As she revealed in an interview for the movie with the SAG-AFTRA Foundation (at 15:11 of this video), she just happened to have all of those voices handy already! “In the script, the impressions were largely, almost like created characters that Eva had written in — like, Nina does an impression of her uncle. And there were a few other ones, like celebrities that she had written in. But none of them were any that I felt like I would be super comfortable doing, so I just made a list of names of people that I thought I think maybe I could do a few of these people. Particularly the singers, because I sing, and so I thought that might be a good jumping off point, that I could manipulate my voice a little bit.

“But most of them just came from things I’ve done, in the shower or with friends in conversation, or funny voices that I’ve done by myself. So I’m certainly not an impressionist by any means, but I’ve probably done all the ones you see in the movie at one point or another just in life.”

I mean. C’mon!

I know SNL usually picks guest hosts based on what project they have to promote, but it’s about time the show promoted some MEW. She’s a comedy star just waiting for her stage.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Where to stream All About Nina