James Franco wasted none of his “Saturday Night Live” hosting time before addressing the recent massive Sony hack, which counted him and “Interview” co-star Seth Rogen among the victims.
During Saturday’s monologue, Franco admitted, “Soon, you’ll know that my email is CuterThanDaveFranco@AOL.com.”
“My password is LittleJamesyCutiePie,” he continued. “This is all just a real violation of my personal life.”
Franco also used the unfortunate situation to blame his previous inappropriate Instagram contact with an underage girl on the hackers, despite that news coming from the spring.
Rogen joined his buddy and frequent collaborator onstage to share the latest update: Their private cell phone photos have also been stolen and released. A few silly examples proved the pictures were predictably creepy — especially their Christmas card. But the nudity was just par for the course for the duo.
“It’s much, much worse than we thought it would be,” Rogen summed up the whole incident. We agree, especially having seen the snapshots.
As a result of the GOP hack, Franco’s “Interview” salary was unveiled to be $6.5 million. While that’s surely not chump change, it is nearly $2 million less than Rogen’s $8.4 million take. The duo didn’t touch that topic during their Studio 8H speech.
A massive amount of personal information about Sony employees was released to the public in the cyber attack. At first, some thought North Korea — the target in Franco and Rogen’s “The Interview” — might be behind the database infiltration, but the country denied any involvement.
Before Franco’s monologue, in the show’s cold open, veteran “SNL” player Kenan Thompson did his best outraged Al Sharpton, who apparently has as much teleprompter-reading trouble as he does anger.
The NBC sketch comedy show also took on “Peter Pan Live” and the new “Star Wars” trailer early on. The “Pan” panning relied on some obvious Allison-Williams-is-not-a-boy jokes and Christopher-Walken-playing-Christopher-Walken-playing-Captain-Hook humor. Aidy Bryant played a fill-in Tinkerbell.
For the filmed “Star Wars” spoof, cast members fired shots at the older actors reprising their roles in the next installment of the sci-fi franchise.
A few sketches into the episode, newcomer Pete Davidson kicked off a “Jingle Ballerz” nativity scene skit, taking a few shots at MTV in the process. Musical guest Nicki Minaj — who also cameos in “The Interview” — took on the role of Beyonce, paired with Kate McKinnon’s Justin Bieber. Naturally, Kanye West (Jay Pharoah) was the baby Jesus.
During the “Weekend Update” fake news segment, the show kinda-sorta addressed the Bill Cosby controversy, letting Bobby Moynihan’s constantly misinformed character, Anthony Crispino, accidentally accuse Bing Crosby of rapping. He was just slightly off on those allegations.
Minaj also made a “Weekend Update” appearance, portraying Kim Kardashian. She played herself in a later sketch; Rogen helped close the night in another, playing a character named “James Franco.”
In other real-Franco news, the multi-hyphenate was actually nominated for a Grammy on Friday, for his spoken-word work, “Actor’s Anonymous.”
Watch the monologue and some of the other relevant sketches videos from Franco’s “SNL”: