He will soon be adding another unusual title to his résumé: “Saturday Night Live” host.
The chief executive of Tesla Inc. and Space Exploration Technology Corp., or SpaceX, is scheduled to host NBC’s long-running, late-night comedy show on May 8, the show said in a Saturday tweet adorned with three rocket emojis.
Musk’s scheduled May 8 appearance builds upon his recent run of success. Tesla’s stock is worth nearly six times more than it was before the pandemic started, leaving Musk with an estimated fortune of $177 billion, according to Forbes magazine. And SpaceX just a launched a mission that sent astronauts to the International Space Station.
A businessman is an atypical choice for “SNL” host, but Mr. Musk is an atypical businessman. Tesla recently notified the Securities and Exchange Commission that he was adding the formal title of “Technoking” to his CEO role, and Mr. Musk is famous for his prolific tweets offering proclamations, jokes, and occasional attacks on regulators and short sellers of his stock.
Saturday Night Live doesn’t make a habit of having business executives host its show, but Musk is far from a stuffy corporate type. He regularly jokes around on Twitter, where he has nearly 52 million followers and has gotten into legal trouble for making disparaging remarks about critics and hinting that he might lead a buyout of Tesla that resulted him getting fined $20 million by stock market regulators.
While hosting a comedy sketch show will be a departure for Mr. Musk, he has played the showman for years at his companies’ product events, and has enjoyed the entertainment-industry spotlight before, with sometimes unpredictable results. He has appeared multiple times on the podcast of Joe Rogan—the comedian, television host and mixed martial arts commentator—including a September 2018 episode in which a video recording appeared to show Mr. Musk smoking marijuana. Shares in Tesla fell after the event.
“SNL,” which has been airing since 1975, generally taps the entertainment world for its hosts, but it has reached into other realms of celebrity before, including business and politics. Publishing magnate Steve Forbes did the honors in 1996, shortly after giving up his pursuit of the Republican presidential nomination. The late George Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees, hosted in 1990, and Ralph Nader, the high-profile consumer crusader, hosted in 1977. Donald Trump hosted in 2004, when he was early in his tenure on the NBC reality series “The Apprentice,” and again 2015, when he was vying to be the Republican candidate for the White House.
Miley Cyrus will be the musical guest on the night Musk hosts.
