Mulligan is yet another British actress that SNL has trouble making look good

https://tv.avclub.com/carey-mulligan-throws-herself-into-a-warmed-over-saturd-1846660256

Okay, somehow that went well.”

“I’m not an actor, I’m a [serious period drama] star!!”

There’s a certain type of British actress that Saturday Night Live struggles to accommodate. Acclaimed, accomplished, award-winning, not especially known for sketch comedy, and, as it turns out, not especially adept at it—if that’s your résumé, prepare to get crammed into some WWII garb and practice your upper lip-stiffening. Even if you are known for being fucking hilarious (like former esteemed Brits Phoebe Waller-Bridge or, way back, battiest Queen Elizabeth I ever, Miranda Richardson), you’re getting into some 1940s wife-wear. Carey Mulligan was actually just fine in her first SNL hosting gig, trying on a few accents, showing up in most of the sketches, and basically being capable, even if, again, the Promising Young Woman star is unlikely to ditch prestige drama for knockabout slapstick any time soon.

Mulligan was most relaxed and funny as herself, her monologue aptly playing up Americans’ inability to differentiate the former Suffragette, Daisy Buchanan, and Bathsheba Everdine from fellow blonde thespian Michelle Williams, and eventually using amiably goofy husband Marcus Mumford as a comic foil. (Seriously, doesn’t Mumford seem like the guy who thinks busting out an acoustic guitar at the party is super-cool?) That most of the ensuing sketches were built around Mulligan is a good thing, even if her role in those sketches was primarily as straight-person or part of an ensemble in some dusted-off recurring bits. Sometimes a dramatic actor will dazzle with thitherto-untapped comedy chops, but sometimes they’re more to be applauded for throwing their considerable talents into being professional in an unfamiliar setting.

Apart from the monologue, Mulligan was best in the trailer for award-bait Lesbian Period Drama, sending up her own penchant for the sort of intense performances she’s been channeling into her unlucky kids’ bedtime stories (I would watch the one about the pill-popping unicorn), alongside those tremblingly dour repression operas that feature “straight actresses who dare not to wear makeup.” Mulligan and Heidi Gardner make for a spot-on pair of 19th century tentative would-be lovers, whose attenuated and terse courtship in the “grey air and long, rocky walks” reaches of England finally explodes into the sort of explicit, headboard-cracking sex scene that signals, as the knowing narration notes, “Oh yeah, a man directed this.” Points to Kate McKinnon, as the inevitable, out-and-anachronistically proud former flame of Gardner’s demure governess, who, witnessing the long-delayed sex scene, exclaims amusedly, “Gals, it’s 1840. I don’t think that’s been invented yet.” The joke construction of a trailer that plainly states the tired underlying tropes and stereotypes of a particular kind of film is hardly new. (And the review blurb from a lesbian publication sighing, “Sure, I mean, I’m gonna see it,” makes me think back to the Kids In The Hall ketch where a trio of gay guys dutifully plod to see an elliptically “brave” gay drama because what other options do they have.) But the three leads here are excellent, and if Lesbian Period Drama frees Mulligan from having to truss up for her own wan Ammonite, then it will all have been worth it.