Entertainment

‘Dua’ is Albanian for love — Dua Lipa jokes about name in SNL monologue

The pop star and “Argylle” actress pulled double duty on "Saturday Night Live" last night.

By Natalie Gale

May 5, 2024

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“‘Dua’ is Albanian for love, and ‘Lipa’ is Albanian for… my last name.”

That’s her real name, said Dua Lipa last night on “Saturday Night Live,” which she hosted for the first time with her parents in the audience. She pulled double duty as musical guest, too, but it wasn’t her first Studio 8H rodeo — last night marked her third appearance as musical guest on the show.

The singer plugged the extremely recent release of her third studio album, “Radial Optimism,” which came out this past Friday, and includes a few already hit singles like “Houdini” and “Training Season.”

And Lipa wasn’t the show’s only special guest. Jerry Seinfeld stopped by Weekend Update as part of his whirlwind press tour for his upcoming Netflix comedy “Unfrosted,” a star-studded flick about the breakfast cereal industry.

Cold Open

It’s New York 1’s Spectrum News, and a broadcaster is interviewing parents of students at college protests. They’re nervous for their kids, but one father (Kenan Thompson) thinks it’s just great. “Nothing makes me prouder than young people using their voices to fight for what they believe in.” Unless it’s his daughter. “I’m supportive of y’all’s kids protesting,” he says. “Alexa Vanessa Roberts better have her butt in class.” And when it comes time for graduation at the end of this month, he’s putting on his church clothes and three pumps of Cool Water cologne to drive his ‘98 Ford Explorer to the graduation ceremony.

Monologue

In a short, sweet monologue, Dua Lipa mentions that she made her U.S. TV debut from 30 Rock on “The Tonight Show,” and that her parents are in the audience tonight. She plugs her recently released album, “Radical Optimism,” and takes audience questions on what “radical optimism” means to her.

Young Spicy

Devon Walker is back as rapper Young Spicy, and he’s recording a producer tag to play at the beginning of his songs. But the two voiceover artists (Lipa, Ego Nwodim) don’t understand what he’s going for. He wants cool and menacing? “Spicy so straight it’s frightening.” He wants suave? “Spicy, why you DM-ing high schoolers?”

The Anomalous Man

In 1897 London, a beautiful young woman (Lipa) falls for a strange, reclusive man (Sarah Sherman) in a dramatic, Beauty and the Beast-esque vignette. The monstrous-looking man has never been loved by a woman before, and finally leaves his old life behind for a happiness he thought he’d never know. The punch line comes over three minutes into the sketch — on their first night together, his new wife catches him texting another woman. “You know, we never really said we were exclusive.”

Good Morning Greenville

Morning news personalities (Heidi Gardner, Mikey Day) in South Carolina need to get serious for a minute and speak on what’s happening in the world right now: the beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar. The two cringy white hosts keep mispronouncing rappers’ names, and their culture critic (Lipa), whose favorite rapper is Elton John, has been trying to piece together all the diss tracks for 48 hours. They think the weather man (Walker) looks like he wants to jump in on this, to which he responds, “Please let me just do the weather and go home.”

Sonny Angel

A woman (Lipa) brings her date (Marcello Hernandez) back to her apartment, where he’s shocked to see her huge Sonny Angel collection. The strange little dolls are having a huge moment with Gen-Z right now — they look like naked babies with hats on, and “they’re companions for lonely, 25-year-old working women.” Lipa picks out her favorite Sonny Angel (Bowen Yang) and encourages a “Challengers”-like ménage à trois between the three of them. And it turns out her Sonny Angels are all the men she’s dated.

Dua Lipa

The pop star performs “Illusion,” announced by Troye Sivan, and “Happy For You,” announced by Jerry Seinfeld, both off her recently released album.

Weekend Update

Colin Jost and Michael Che take stabs at some of the week’s top news stories, like the 150th Kentucky Derby, Biden calling Japan “xenophobic,” Sylvester Stallone’s forthcoming memoir, and Kristi Noem’s recent dog scandal. To comment, they bring on Noem’s current dog (Hernandez), who’s in a constant state of fear. Another special guest? A Man Who Did Too Much Press — Jerry Seinfeld, who promoted his upcoming Netflix film.

OBGYN

Kenan Thomspon is Fat Daddy, a barbeque pit master turned OBGYN, who’s seeing a pregnant patient (Nwodim) for a checkup. Cue a slew of barbeque puns — he’s “ducking into the pit,” and he even brings his tongs. The baby’s coming along good, says the doctor, he’s just a little dry — in a couple more months, he should be falling off the bone. There are lots of breaks in this sketch.

Jingle Pitch 2

The business executives at a flooring company need their team to come up with a catchy jingle to get their phone number stuck in customers’ heads and boost their Q1 sales. So they bring on goofy, ‘70s-ish musicians (James Austin Johnson and Andrew Dismukes) to turn the long, complicated phone number into an earworm. The audience loves this one.