‘Saturday Night Live’ Adds Don Cheadle as Guest for February 16 Episode

Saturday Night Live named House of Lies star Don Cheadle as the guest host for the second new episode of February.

While the Feb. 9 episode will feature singer Halsey as both guest host and musical performer, Cheadle will host the following episode on Saturday, Feb. 16, with singer/guitarist Gary Clark Jr. as his musical performer.

This will be the Oscar-nominated Cheadle’s first time hosting SNL. He now stars on the Showtime comedy Black Monday, which debuted earlier this month. He is also reprising his role as James Rhodes/War Machine in Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame, which opens on April 26.

Black Monday was created by David Caspe and Jordan Cahan, and is set on Oct. 19, 1987, the day of the worst stock market crash in Wall Street History. Cheadle stars as Maurice “Mo” Monroe, with Andrew Rannells, Regina Hall and Paul Scheer.

Cheadle previously appeared on Showtime in House of Lies, which ran from 2012 to 2016. The series earned him a Golden Globe in 2013 and four Emmy nominations.

“The main aspect of Mo’s personality is to shoot first — he’s definitely shoot, ready, aim,” Cheadle told The Hollywood Reporter of his character. “If he was a poker player, he would rather have all of his money in the middle, waiting on the cards to come to make his hand good, rather than someone who knows they have a great hand and goes in. And as we know, it can’t last. The wheels, at some point, have to come off when you deal with business in that way.”

Although the show is set in the 1980s, Cheadle said the events in the series are still relevant to today’s financial world.

“It feels like the more things change, the more they stay the same,” he told USA Today. “We’re still dealing with questions about deregulation and skirting of rules that certain players seem to always be able to get away with.”

SNL is taking Super Bowl weekend off. The Jan. 26 episode featured James McAvoy as the host and Meek Mill as performer. Steve Martin made a cameo as Roger Stone, the former aide for President Donald Trump who was arrested last week in Robert S. Mueller’s Russia investigation.

SNL airs on NBC at 11:30 p.m. ET on Saturdays.

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