“Saturday Night Live” will score a hat trick” at Saturday’s Directors Guild of America Awards. In our latest predictions, Don Roy King has 16/5 odds to . bag his third straight win in the variety series category for the Adam Driver-hosted Season 44 premiere.
The veteran “SNL” director is also the reigning champ in the corresponding Emmy category, but not for the same episode; he won the Emmy for the Donald Glover episode from Season 43. The Season 44 premiere featured Kanye West as the musical guest and Matt Damon‘s debut as now Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in the cold open.
King is ahead of Paul Pennolino (“Last Week Tonight with John Oliver”), the team from “Who Is America?” (Sacha Baron Cohen, Nathan Fielder, Daniel Gray Longino and Dan Mazer), Jim Hoskinson (“The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”) and Paul G. Casey (“Real Time with Bill Maher”). He’s defeated Pennolino, Hoskinson and Casey the past two years.
SEE DGA Awards TV nominations: Get the full list of nominees
King doesn’t have unanimous support from our pundits though. One Expert, Adnan Virk (ESPN), is calling a Pennolino upset, as are four of our Top 24 Users. And two of our Top 24 Users are backing “Who Is America?”
“SNL” has ruled this category since the DGA split the musical variety series category into variety series and variety specials five years ago. This would be the sketch series fourth victory here overall, following its wins in 2014, 2017 and 2018, all for King, who has another DGA Award for the “SNL” 40th anniversary special. Dave Diomedi prevailed in 2015 and 2016 for “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” so yeah, that means only two shows and two people have ever won this category.
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