“Saturday Night Live” made way for a grand lady as host this weekend.
But unlike last year’s Betty White, film actress Helen Mirren was treated as a
sex symbol – almost throughout the entire show.
It started from the opening number, when Mirren, 65, sang about being
saucy and threatened to show her tattoos. In a digital short, cast member Nasim
Pedrad goes into heaven when she is allowed to touch her breasts. She made out
with Abby Elliott in a sketch where Mirren was a malevolent Eleanor Roosevelt in
a “Kennedys” style miniseries, ordering up Marilyn Monroe as a birthday treat
for herself. Then she was pixilated as being topless when calling Japan to
order the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Finally, at the end of the show, played a longtime stripper at a club.
On the other hand, she also called upon to play such famous Englishwomen
as Helena Bonham Carter, Mary Shelley and Julie Andrews.
Mirren went into the show thinking she’d play the Queen of England in
every sketch, she said in a number of interviews. “But Elton John did all that
last week,” she said in her opening monologue.
