Dakota Johnson Last Hosted ‘SNL’ Nearly a Decade Ago: How Did She Do?

Dakota Johnson is hosting Saturday Night Live this weekend, and you’d be forgiven for assuming it’s her first time. She last hosted almost a decade ago, in early 2015 – an episode not frequently shown in reruns, and overshadowed at the time by the show’s just-aired 40th anniversary special. These long gaps between hosting gigs have become more common as the series approaches its 50th birthday next year; between the five-timers (or those on the five-timer track) and the newbies, there are plenty of celebrities whose drop-ins have been more occasional. So if you’re looking for a preview for how Dakota might fare this time around, we’ve got you covered with a look back at her last episode, which, like a ton of SNL stuff, is streaming on Peacock.

When and Why She’s There: Johnson hosted on February 28, 2015, to promote Fifty Shades of Grey, which had already opened to massive box office and moderate-to-severe giggling. That’s evident in Johnson’s deadpan monologue, where she adroitly offhands a joke about the movie not turning up at the Oscars a year later. Though the knock on Johnson at the time was that she appeared nervous and cue-card-dependent, she nails a monologue that depends and succeeds on her old-fashioned, professionally understated joke delivery, at least until a less amusing but still passable series of audience-member encounters (an SNL standby, up to and including last week’s Jacob Elordi episode, though far more common in the mid-1990s).

Era: As mentioned, Johnson hosted right in the middle of Season 40. In retrospect, this is towards the beginning of what became the Kate McKinnon/Cecily Strong/Aidy Bryant era, which lasted into the 2020s. But the player who’s weirdly dominant in this particular episode is Taran Killam, which does fit with the recent Vulture interview noting that he’s actually logged some of the most screentime in recent SNL history. Apparently Dakota Johnson landed smack in the middle of the Killam Era and we didn’t even know it.

Time Capsule: Speaking of Taran Killam, he doesn’t really have a Rudy Guiliani impression, so at first it’s confusing to see him playing the ex-mayor in the cold open. But then it turns out the show is doing a riff on Birdman, which had won the Academy Award for Best Picture just six days earlier – and Killam has those Michael Keaton facial mannerisms down. The idea is that Guiliani, then doing a conservative rabble-rousing media tour, is haunted by his past triumphs and debasing himself with this new persona, which seems pretty quaint so many years after Four Seasons Total Landscaping. (Weekend Update also features a wan joke about Donald Trump threatening to run for president.) As a political sketch, though, the Birdman spoof is ambitious, and vaguely reminiscent of some of the show’s ’90s political mash-ups, that makes its vast datedness more compelling than countless direct-address openers.

Highlights: Honestly, a lot – this episode is very good, much better than its contemporaneous reactions indicated! Kyle Mooney, early in his run time the show, has a funny bit where he plays an elementary-schooler interviewing Johnson at the Fifty Shades press junket; and there’s a semi-absurdist bit where a batch of young office interns who “literally can’t even” inexplicably and mercilessly bully a colleague (Aidy Bryant, pitch-perfect in her harriedness) who has two broken arms (and therefore actually literally can’t even). Kenan Thompson, at the time just about a quarter of the way through what we assume will be a 50-year run on the show, plays a doctor dressed as Worf from Star Trek, and it’s one of those sketches where watching it not particularly land with the live audience makes it funnier.

Lowlights: A talk-show sketch about net neutrality is a disjointed compendium of dorky jokes about internet users, tightly yoked to the then-current dress-photo debate. The dress is also the subject of Weekend Update jokes; all’s fair in a topical weekly series, but wow, they really seem fixated! At least the internet-talk-show sketch is immediately followed by a far-better digital-media spoof of self-righteous YouTubers, from Beck Bennett and Kyle Mooney.

Recurring characters: Cecily Strong’s disheveled, blunt-spoken character Cathy Anne became a fixture on Weekend Update, but made a few forays into actual sketches; here she plays the overbearing friend of Cinderella (Johnson), modeled after the then-current Disney live-action version. Cathy Anne may not be on Update this time around, but it does feature an appearance from Bobby Moynihan’s beloved-by-me Riblet, supposedly Michael Che’s friend from high school. Less beloved by me but more delightful to the public at large is Kate McKinnon’s Ruth Bader Ginsberg – and honestly, this early appearance of her issuing “Gins-burns” and then doing a “funny” dance doesn’t go over as gangbusters as you’d expect, given how rapturously it was received in subsequent installments. (That might be because it’s extremely hacky!)

Missing from Peacock: Everything omitted from the Peacock stream of this episode seems to be music-clearance-related. (This is often the case, but some episodes are cut down far more than others, and other material is sometimes lifted out for reasons that remain opaque.) The Alabama Shakes musical performances are out, as is a filmed piece that heavily features the Sara Bareilles song “Brave.” Luckily, the latter (which seemed to be especially well-liked when it aired) is hiding in plain sight on its directors’ Vimeo (albeit a version without the audience reaction). Surprisingly available on Peacock, given the reaction at the time, is a fake ad, spoofing a then-current Toyota spot, where Taran Killam (again) plays a dad dropping off his daughter – seemingly at college or to head into the U.S. military, but actually to join ISIS. Finally, Weekend Update is somewhat truncated – there’s a jump at some point in the rebroadcast, likely ported over from the 42-minute network rerun of the episode (though the Peacock version is lengthier than that overall).

How She Did: Look, Johnson obviously isn’t a comic dynamo in the mode of Emma Stone or a game-for-whatever Scarlett Johansson – superstar actresses so into the SNL experience that they both married SNL staffers. Don’t expect Dakota Johnson/Kyle Mooney wedding bells anytime soon. That said, Johnson’s subdued energy works fine for the sketches she’s given, and her understated reactions are often on-point. Based on this and her funny promo, her return engagement could literally turn out to be a stealth Season 49 highlight. After all, she now boasts the awesome powers of Madame Web at her disposal.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.

Dakota Johnson's Season 40 episode of Saturday Night Live is on Peacock.