NEED TO KNOW
Jack Black is looking back on the Saturday Night Live skit that never was.
On the Dec. 16 episode of Late Night with Seth Meyers, Black opened up about a sketch, “Boys Night Out,” that Amy Poehler and Emily Spivey wrote for the long-running comedy show, which unfortunately never saw the light of day. Black, 56, has hosted SNL four times since his debut in 2002.
The sketch, according to Meyers, featured a man whose wife was out for the day, so he decided to have a boys’ night out.
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“I pitched it to Amy, and Amy wrote it up for me. Bespoke for me. And it was just a little song. I was like, ‘I think it would be really fun to come out and sing a song,'” Black recalled before, of course, launching into the chorus: “Boys night out / Boys night out / Now we’re really rockin’ / And the chicks are all a-squawkin’ / ‘Cause we’re talking ‘bout a boys night out!”
While Black — and the Late Night audience — “thought it was funny,” during that week’s dress rehearsal, the crowd wasn’t as pleased, Black remembered. “It really took a dump-ski,” he said.
Ultimately, SNL creator Lorne Michaels pulled the sketch, a decision Black supported.
“I was like, ‘No, yeah, don’t, let’s not do it,'” he joked.
While the SNL dress rehearsal audience clearly weren’t fans of the bit, Meyers said Black “never took his foot off the gas,” applauding the comedian for “trying his hardest” to really sell it.
Despite the skit being cut, Meyers, who was on SNL from 2001 to 2014, says it “is still incredibly beloved among my cohort from that era.”
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Black and Poehler also recently discussed the never-aired skit on Poehler’s Good Hang podcast in April. Turns out, “Boys Night Out” had a simple premise and execution.
“Emily Spivey and I wrote a sketch called ‘Boys Night Out,’ and it was Jack waiting for the boys to arrive, and they never showed up,” Poehler explained. “He just kept ordering more wings.”
Black’s first hosting gig on SNL was in January 2002, followed by appearances in October 2003, December 2005, and, most recently, April 2025.
