Ladies and Gentlemen, The Weeknd

About

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Weeknd refers to a viral clip of actor Daniel Craig introducing a musical performance by The Weeknd on Saturday Night Live. Towards the end of 2020, the clip was taken out of context and widely reposted on Twitter on Fridays by gimmick Twitter account @CraigWeekend, making it appear as though Craig was celebrating the upcoming weekend.

Origin

On March 7th, 2020,^[1] Daniel Craig hosted Saturday Night Live and the musical guest for the episode was The Weeknd. Keeping with SNL tradition, Craig introduced The Weeknd before he played. He stated, "Ladies and gentlemen: The Weeknd" while shrugging his arms (shown below).

Spread

On July 31st, 2020, Twitter account @CraigWeekend^[2] launched. The account is a gimmick Twitter account dedicated to reposting Craig's introduction of The Weeknd every Friday, as though Craig were introducing the upcoming weekend.

The account posted intermittently for several months before growing widely popular. The account's January 8th, 2021 post of the video was the first to see significant spread, gaining over 11,000 retweets and 80,000 likes (shown below).

Since that post, the account's Friday reposts have regularly gained tens of thousands of retweets and millions of views. As of March 12th, 2021, the account has over 184,000 followers.

SNL Hosts Introducing The Musical Guest

On September 11th, 2021, the Twitter account @SNLHostsIntro^[3] launched. The account is dedicated to posting clips of celebrity hosts of Saturday Night Live introducing the musical guest for the evening. The first video posted there shows Nathan Lane introducing Metallica (shown below).

Over the course of one month, the account gained 32,000 followers. It began receiving increased attention on October 7th, 2021, after posting a clip of Adrien Brody doing a Rastafarian accent in his introduction for Sean Paul, which was improvised and resulted and in him getting banned from the show.^[4] (shown below).

After that post, other clips posted by the account began receiving attention, such as Christine Baranski introducing The Cure (shown below, top) and Christopher Walken introducing the Foo Fighters (shown below, bottom).

Search Interest

External References