‘SNL UK’s Cast Reveals the Unhinged Stories They Want To Turn Into Sketches

Published Sep 17, 2026, 12:00 PM EDT

Greer Riddell is a London-based culture journalist and critic writing on film, television, audience behaviour, and the wider media industry. She is a Writer and Social Media Coordinator at Collider and TV Editor at FILMHOUNDS.

Her recent collaborations include Netflix, Warner Bros., DC Studios, Hulu, and Disney+, producing features on titles including Saturday Night Live UK, Severance, Sitcoms, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Stranger Things. Her recent reviews include Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, Stranger Things: Tales From ‘85’, Scrubs Season 10, and The Boroughs. Her work has also included coverage of UK film festivals and features published in Film Stories Magazine.

Summary

• In a North American exclusive with Collider, Saturday Night Live UK stars George Fouracres, Larry Dean, and Ania Magliano break down how they approach political impersonations and what makes a character finally click.
• Fouracres reveals how real-world political quirks shape his impressions, while Dean explains how he built his King Charles III from mannerisms, research, and gradual experimentation.
• The trio also look ahead to Season 2, from new political targets and bizarre British news stories to the possibility of bringing SNL’s Joke Swap format to Weekend Update.

Saturday Night Live UK is back for Season 2, and the cast has been preparing to play a new wave of British politicians, royals, and celebrities. George Fouracres, Larry Dean, and Weekend Update anchor Ania Magliano spoke to Collider about which new impersonations we can expect in Season 2 and the bizarre real-world stories that could become the show's next big talking point. Count Binface included.

Fouracres and Dean reveal why the best impressions start with one strange detail.

Image via Sky

Fouracres stood out in Saturday Night Live UK Season 1 as the cast's most reliable performer, being entrusted with national treasures such as Sir David Attenborough. He also led the show's most important political sketches by impersonating former Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. But one of the defining issues in British politics over the last few years — which, rather strangely, has a direct impact on comedies like this — is the constant churn of political leaders. None have remained in office long enough to make a truly defining impression on the public or expose the quirks and mannerisms that, over time, can be exaggerated into a strong political impersonation. Starmer was no exception. He was widely known for being a little boring, and his only comical bit was repeatedly stating while canvassing that his dad was a toolmaker.

But thankfully, a few episodes into Saturday Night Live UK Season 1, Starmer seemed to almost malfunction in the middle of Prime Minister's Questions and make a noise that sounded like "meep meep." Fouracres latched onto this immediately. "You alight on certain parts of their soul, and then you extract them, and then you create a sort of genetic clone," he says. His answer to how one puts together a successful impersonation of a real person in the public eye is perhaps a little more biological than expected. "I've actually got a lot of Keir Starmer's plasma."

Dean sheds more light on his own individual process, having taken on the UK's most recognizable figurehead in Season 1, King Charles III. To prepare for that role, he discloses, "I had to start watching The Crown ... It's not usually the kind of thing I'd watch ... And then I'd watch YouTube videos on him." Unlike the conveyor belt of prime ministers, the British royal family is a mainstay and has been in the public eye since birth. There is a wealth of culturally shared knowledge for a comedian such as Dean to draw on when crafting an accurate and amusing representation of the King. Think hands in his pockets, his signature bumbling noises, or references to his multitude of social faux pas.

Dean praises Fouracres' Starmer, saying, "You'd take from topical parts of the person, but then there'd also be little mannerisms. So it's almost like a gradual thing." And it's that gradual process that he believes allowed him to build Charles. "I'll usually find something similar I can already do and then gradually try and push my way towards it," he says, before joking, "I don't know, maybe you can tell my accent's not exactly, you know, English royal accent. It's a bit far off." His Glaswegian rhythm ultimately makes it even more impressive that he can switch seamlessly into King Charles' RP.

Fouracres on How Far ‘Saturday Night Live UK’ Season 2 Will Satirize British Politics

Fouracres weighs in on ‘SNL UK’s changing political targets.

Image via. Sky UK

We can almost guarantee plenty more of Dean's King Charles III in Saturday Night Live UK Season 2. However, it may be the end of the road for Fouracres' Starmer impression due to real-world political changes in the United Kingdom. Starmer's resignation looks too far away in the news cycle to justify one final appearance, but perhaps there is a new front-runner on the list of British icons Fouracres could play. "There's so much I could say about bins," Fouracres says when asked about the most recognizable political candidate of the summer, Count Binface.

In news that sounds awfully like the premise of a successful Saturday Night Live UK sketch, comedian Jon Harvey donned a black cape, armor, and a large silver bin on his head to stand against controversial figure Nigel Farage. The leader of the right-wing party Reform UK, who was played by Peter Serafinowicz in a Season 1 cold open, triggered his own by-election in the small coastal town of Clacton-on-Sea and, to mock the whole process, Count Binface became his opponent. He wasn’t the only one—34 candidates made the ballot paper 90 centimetres long, making it the longest in British history. The perfect Saturday Night Live UK Season 2 fodder.

However, Fouracres seems to take his responsibility for leading the political sketches on the series very seriously, akin to a real politician representing their constituents. "I look forward to whoever, like all politicians, being of service to the public, and whoever they find for me next, I hope I will equip myself."

However, Saturday Night Live UK Season 2, Episode 1 came with a surprise, as the role of impersonating brand-new Prime Minister Andy Burnham changed hands. In Season 1, northerner Paddy Young came out from behind the Weekend Update desk to perform in one of his only sketches of the season, which saw Burnham making his way from the north of the country down to Number 10 Downing Street in London with a bindle on his back.

As Burnham won the Labour leadership contest, it was clear that the role would need to become more prominent every week, so it seems as if the Saturday Night Live UK team did not want to give that permanent responsibility to Young. Instead, it was Fouracres who interrupted Season 2's cold open, focused on the reunion between the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, King Charles, and Queen Camilla. It looks as if Fouracres will continue holding the responsibility of the show's most important political impression in Saturday Night Live UK Season 2.

However, Weekend Update anchor Magliano was not so interested in the new Prime Minister over the summer. Instead, a strange animal-related news story caught her eye that she believes would be perfect sketch material for Saturday Night Live UK Season 2. "There was a lorry on the M25 that dropped a lot of pigs." When Dean and Fouracres looked shocked at this news, she claimed, "I think it was quite far down on the BBC news page." Sketches about pigs and pork do very well on Saturday Night Live, so perhaps this obscure disaster on a British motorway is exactly the sort of thing we should expect next week.

When asked who she would like to play in a sketch, Magliano sarcastically replied that it would have to be somebody with her voice and accent, as taking on an existing character "sounds like a lot of work."

Ania Magliano Follows the Lead of ‘SNL’s Colin Jost and Michael Che for Weekend Update

Magliano wants to bring ‘SNL’s Joke Swap chaos to Weekend Update.

As well as checking BBC News for obscure stories, Magliano should keep an eye on the original Saturday Night Live, as its Weekend Update hosts Colin Jost and Michael Che have an interesting format idea that the British version has yet to adopt. When asked what she could write on a cue card that would instantly break fellow Weekend Update anchor Young and cause him to laugh in the style of Saturday Night Live's iconic Joke Swap, she quipped, "I don't know the guy very well." She then reveals that the one thing Young does that instantly sends her into fits of laughter is beatboxing, sharing how "[their] writer Charlie has to leave the room and cover his eyes with his laptop because it's so harrowing when he does that."

This may explain a very bizarre moment on Weekend Update in Season 1, where, alongside his chastising of a group of writers below a trapdoor and his encyclopedic knowledge of K-pop band BTS, Young performed a lengthy beatbox rap to commemorate British comedy royalty Eric Morecambe's hundredth birthday. We hope Charlie was okay after that.

Saturday Night Live itself is a 50-year-old American format now being given a British twist. But what do the Saturday Night Live UK cast think American fans should be watching? Fouracres had a very peculiar recommendation: On the Buses, a sitcom broadcast on ITV from 1969 to 1973 that focused on, as Fouracres puts it, "hideous old men who were just on the buses all the time and eating bread and being horrible to people." Stan Butler (Reg Varney) and Jack Harper (Bob Grant), who make up the crew of the number 11 bus at the Luxton and District Motor Traction Company, spend a lot of time leering at the company's female employees, while Inspector Blake (Stephen Lewis) attempts to make their lives a misery.

Like a lot of British media from the 1970s, On the Buses may tarnish the reputation of Great Britain, but Fouracres believes this is necessary. "Every time they maybe see, like, Paddington or Downton Abbey or anything like that, they know what's behind the curtain of this country," he says. Perhaps leave this one as a last resort if you have exhausted the existing catalog on BritBox.

Saturday Night Live UK returned for Season 2 on September 12 with the first six episodes, with additional shows to follow in early 2027.