Inde Navarrette used her first appearance as host of “Saturday Night Live” on Halloween night to joke about her horror film “Obsession,” introduce a visual gag involving her boyfriend and take a swipe at comedian Shane Gillis. The 25-year-old actor delivered her opening monologue at Studio 8H after a Trump-focused cold open that brought back Tom Hanks as David S. Pumpkins.
Navarrette’s hosting debut came amid attention surrounding “Obsession,” described as one of the year’s breakout horror hits. She opened by acknowledging that viewers were likely to recognize her from the film, then addressed a question she said people frequently ask: whether she resembles Nikki, the character she plays.
Her answer briefly became part of the performance. Navarrette denied being like Nikki while slipping into the character’s cadence, turning the denial into a joke for the audience. She then repeated that she was different from her character and pointed to her relationship with boyfriend Nick Aiello as an example, saying he had come to support her.
The monologue followed that claim with a cut to Aiello in the audience. After Navarrette described their relationship as relaxed and sought his agreement, the camera showed him bound and gagged in a chair. The staged reveal supplied the punchline to her insistence that her life bore little resemblance to her role in the horror movie.
Navarrette then shifted from “Obsession” to her upcoming appearance in a Marvel film. She is set to play Rogue in the new “X-Men” movie. Introducing that part of the monologue, she expressed disbelief at being able to announce the role and said getting physically fit was important for Marvel.
That setup led to a reference to Gillis’ own “SNL” monologue earlier in October. Describing her exercise routine, Navarrette said, “every morning I put on my little whore outfit and I hit the gym.” The line echoed the language Gillis had used when discussing women’s clothing at the gym.
Gillis had drawn criticism for a joke saying that women now dress like “whores” to work out, including a description of brightly colored shorts that compared them to artificial bait. Navarrette’s version placed the remark inside her account of preparing for a Marvel role, making the earlier monologue a target during her Halloween hosting debut.
