'SNL' returns for work-at-home version with host Tom Hanks

NEW YORK (AP) — “Saturday Night Live” tried its first “quarantine version" of the comedy show, with coronavirus pioneer Tom Hanks, Coldplay singer Chris Martin and the comedy show's entire cast phoning in with jokes from home.

After being gone for more than a month, the NBC comedy institution returned to the air on Easter weekend by emulating other late-night hosts who have abandoned studios and audiences for DIY merriment amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“It is good to be here, though it also very weird to be here hosting ‘Saturday Night Live’ at home,” Hanks said, speaking from his kitchen. “It is a strange time to try and be funny, but trying to be funny is ‘SNL’s whole thing.”

Hanks, in a close-cropped haircut he said was done for a movie, was one of the first celebrities — along with wife Rita Wilson — to test positive for the virus. They recuperated while in Australia.

He said he had to get used to learning his temperature in degrees Celsius, where 36 was good but 38 was bad, “like Hollywood treats female actresses.”

The world's new way of keeping in contact — Zoom meetings — was ripe for satire. The show's “cold open” showed all cast members arrayed in an onscreen gallery familiar to many working from home.

“Live from Zoom,” Kate McKinnon said. “It's sometime between March and August.”

One skit featured a mock Zoom work meeting, where McKinnon and Aidy Bryant played a pair of inappropriate receptionists. Bryant was stopped just in time when she brought her laptop with her into the bathroom.

“I used my license as toilet paper and now I don't know my own birthday,” Bryant said.

Pete Davidson made a mock Drake video and McKinnon portrayed Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg doing a workout routine from...