With his return, Kenan Thompson surpassed Darrell Hammond's record as the longest-tenured cast member in the show's history, with a total of fifteen seasons compared to Hammond's fourteen seasons from 1995-2009.[9]
This is the only season for Luke Null, who was let go after the season's end.[10]
Prior to the start of the season, the show added Steven Castillo, Andrew Dismukes, Claire Friedman, Sam Jay, Erik Marino, Nimesh Patel, and Gary Richardson to the writing staff.[5]
Also prior to the season, head writers Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider (who had written for the show overall since 2011, and were named as head writers at the start of the previous season) departed the show, leaving Kent Sublette and Bryan Tucker as the sole head writers for the first-half of the season.[11]Weekend Update writer Katie Rich (who was previously suspended midway through last season for a controversial Tweet about Barron Trump) was brought back to the writing staff with the Weekend Update: Summer Edition episodes, and officially returned as a writer this season.[12] Additionally, beginning with this season, Weekend Update writers were credited separately from the rest of the writing staff.
At the start of the season, writer Streeter Seidell (who joined the writing staff in 2014) was named as the season's sole writing supervisor.[13]
On December 12, 2017, Jost and Che were named co-head writers, making Che the first African American head writer.[14] Jost was previously the head writer for 3 years from 2012 to 2015.
With the same episode, writers Fran Gillespie and Sudi Green (who had both joined the writing staff in 2015) were named as the co-writing supervisors alongside Seidell.[15]
This was the final season for longtime segment director/writer Dave McCary (who had overall been with the show since 2013), as he left the show after five years.[16] This was Tucker's final season as head writer (a role he previously had for 4½ seasons, starting in 2014), as he would be named a Senior Writer, at the start of the next season.[16] This was also the only season for Friedman, Marino, and Patel.[16]
Kenan Thompson's return for his fifteenth season on the show makes him the longest tenured cast member in the show's history, surpassing the previous record of fourteen seasons, which he had held jointly with Darrell Hammond.
As mentioned by Gadot during the monologue, this was the first episode to be broadcast live in Israel; until this night, it took a week for episodes aired in the US to appear on Israeli TV. During the monologue, Gadot speaks a few sentences in Hebrew for the Israeli audience. The Hebrew sentences are subtitled in English.
"Safelite AutoGlass" was subsequently pulled from rebroadcasts and the Internet after Safelite complained on Twitter that the sketch was offensive (and the humor in it would be considered in bad taste due to the influx of news at the time about male celebrities being outed as sexual offenders). Rebroadcasts of the show replaced the segment with a previously unaired, but released to the Internet, music video sketch called "The Last Fry".[18][19] As of 2019, Hulu has the original Safelite sketch and "The Last Fry" is no longer shown.
When the episode was rerun on August 18, 2018, a photograph of Aretha Franklin, who had died two days earlier, was shown in silence before the goodnights.
Miley Cyrus performs "Bad Mood" and "I Would Die for You" and also appears as a contestant in The Price Is Right sketch, Baby Snatch in "Baby Steps", and a member of the drama club in "Fresh Takes".
Larry David and Jason Sudeikis appear as Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, respectively, in "DNC Commercial". David, while in character, references the controversy that his monologue from the previous week generated, saying that any guy who makes jokes about concentration camps (himself) "should rot in hell".
A photo of SNL sound man George Corrado is shown in silence before the goodnights.
Haddish won an Emmy in 2018 for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for hosting.[23]
Contrary to the usual format in which the musical guest perform two songs at two different segments, Eminem performs a single medley of "Walk on Water", "Stan",[n 1] and "Love the Way You Lie." Skylar Grey performs the entire medley with Eminem, but is not credited as a musical guest.
Writer Gary Richardson appears in "Family Feud" as Steve Harvey’s fictional brother Ricky.
Questlove and Common appear in the pre-recorded "Rap History".
"Aer Lingus" generated controversy for portraying Irish people in a stereotypical manner. Ronan defended the sketch, saying that it was written with her input.[26]
The credits end with the cast ice skating on the skating rink near the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree while Alec Baldwin and the Foo Fighters remain in the studio.
Rockwell accidentally said "fucking" during "Science Room with Mr. Science" (when he tells the kid assistants played by Mikey Day and Cecily Strong "You can't be this fucking stupid"). During Weekend Update, both Colin Jost and Michael Che said "shithole" while discussing a comment President Trump made using that word and how NBC wanted them to tone it down, but openly defied it. All instances were censored for the West Coast feed, which is delayed by a few seconds. While the program airs during the safe harbor period in the Eastern and Central time zones, SNL has aired live coast to coast since the spring of 2017, meaning that in the Mountain and Pacific time zones, Rockwell's comment would have been heard between 9:30 and 10:00 PM or 8:30 and 9:00 PM, respectively, potentially subjecting network affiliates in those regions to FCC fines for indecency if it had not been censored.[31]
Cardi B performs a medley of "Bodak Yellow" and "Bartier Cardi" for her first set and "Be Careful" for her second. She also appears in the pre-recorded "Aidy B".
During her performance of "Be Careful", CardiB revealed her pregnancy for the first time by displaying her pregnant belly in a Christian Siriano dress.[39]
This episode re-aired on September 5, 2020 in tribute to Chadwick Boseman following his August 28 death.
Kacey Musgraves performs "High Horse" and "Slow Burn" and appears in the pre-recorded "Spirituality Rap", unaired during the episode though subsequently released online.
The mothers of Beck Bennett (Sarah), Aidy Bryant (Georgianne), Pete Davidson (Amy), Mikey Day (Sylvia), Colin Jost (Kerry), Kyle Mooney (Linda), Luke Null (Cindy), Chris Redd (Margaret), Kenan Thompson (Elizabeth), and Melissa Villaseñor (Lupe) appear in the cold open.
Melissa McCarthy appears as Michael Che's stepmother on Weekend Update.