James Talarico's SNL Cameo: The Senator-Elect Crashes the Cold Open
Four days after winning a U.S. Senate seat no Democrat had taken since 1988, James Talarico walked onto the Saturday Night Live stage in person — interrupting the show's Trump, joking about his own $5 fundraising texts, and teasing the program for its repetitive cold opens.
NEW YORK — Saturday Night Live opened its November 7 episode the way it has opened so many: with James Austin Johnson's President Donald Trump reacting to an election. This time the reaction was to the November 3 midterms — and this time, one of the winners walked in to answer for himself. Texas Senator-elect James Talarico, whose defeat of Attorney General Ken Paxton was the biggest Democratic win of the night in Texas, made a surprise appearance in the cold open to a cheering Studio 8H crowd, NBC and USA TODAY reported.
"That's Senator Talarico to you," he told Johnson's Trump, according to NBC's recap of the broadcast. "Hi, America. I'm James Talarico, the guy who's been texting you asking for five dollars." The self-deprecating fundraising joke landed with an audience that had spent the fall on the receiving end of exactly those texts: Talarico's campaign raised more than $158 million, the largest Senate haul in Texas history.
He closed the sketch by turning the joke on the show itself, needling SNL for how many of its cold opens now follow the same Trump format — a meta note that USA TODAY and People both singled out as the segment's sharpest moment. The cameo was Talarico's first appearance on the program, and it capped a week in which the 37-year-old former Austin state representative became the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in Texas since 1988, flipping the seat to his party for the first time since 1961, People reported.
The episode was a milestone in its own right beyond the cold open: host Druski became the first digital content creator to host the show, the Strokes performed as musical guest, and Emma Stone made an unannounced appearance in the monologue. By Sunday, the episode — and Talarico's walk-on in particular — sat near the top of the day's U.S. search traffic, the No. 2 non-sports topic in the day's Google Trends roundup. Talarico takes office with the new Congress in January; his Austin district seat in the Texas House will be filled by special election.
