Will Ferrell Shows Up As Jeffrey Epstein To Yuk It Up With Old Pal Trump For Blistering ‘SNL’ Cold Open
Will Ferrell made a memorable appearance as Jeffrey Epstein during the Season 51 finale of Saturday Night Live. The cold open featured a satirical duet with James Austin Johnson as Donald Trump, highlighting the controversial connections between the two figures. The skit included various political references and showcased SNL's ability to blend humor with current events.
- ▪Will Ferrell portrayed Jeffrey Epstein in a cold open for SNL's Season 51 finale.
- ▪The skit featured a duet with James Austin Johnson as Donald Trump, addressing their controversial past.
- ▪The episode included various political references and showcased SNL's comedic take on current events.
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Record
| Original publisher | Deadline |
| Canonical URL | https://deadline.com/2026/05/snl-cold-open-will-ferrell-jeffrey-epstein-paul-mccartney-1236907667/ |
| Publication time | Sun, 17 May 2026 03:47:43 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-17T04:03:58.374Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-17T04:03:58.374Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | XqF9qZplhjgf · 3 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
(L-R) Will Ferrell as Jeffrey Epstein, James Austin Johnson as Donald Trump on SNL's Season 51 finale NBC Who knew that Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump singing Bill Wither’s ‘Just The Two of Us’ was the creepy comic duet we all needed? Saturday Night Live’s 51st Season came to an end today by beginning with a blistering cold open that had host Ferrell as the ghost of pedophile Epstein amidst a mosaic of Trump’s administration’s worst hit and biggest fools. “Donnie, just remember, no matter how many wars you start or how bad you tank the economy as a distraction, people will always associate you with me, and that, my dear close friend, that is a beautiful thing,” Ferrell lovingly told the man who has done everything in his considerable power to distract from his long history with…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Deadline.
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