Adam Driver Played a Baby On His First Flight on "SNL"

It has somehow been five years since Adam Driver showed up on Saturday Night Live to play oil baron Abraham H. Parnassus, a supremely wealthy man who offered his son’s high school class some advice. The sketch featured Driver in old-age makeup; at one point, he impaled a taxidermied bird with his cane. On Driver’s appearance on this weekend’s SNL, he took the opposite route; if that earlier episode brought us Old Man Adam Driver, this one brought viewers Terrifying Baby Adam Driver.

To be more specific: Terrifying Baby Adam Driver on a plane.

The premise of the sketch was simple: a mother (played by Sarah Sherman) told her fellow passengers that this was her baby’s first flight. Given that the baby in question had the head of a fully grown man, hilarity ensued — both from Driver’s utterly deadpan performance and from the brief moments of horror with which the plane’s other inhabitants treated a baby with, you know, the head of a fully grown man.

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The sketch also recalled last year’s “Monkey Judge,” in which John Mulaney played a monkey overseeing a trial; in both cases, much of the humor stemmed from an erudite actor embodying a wholly chaotic character. If you’ve ever wondered what an Oscar-nominated actor playing a screaming baby would look like, look no further.

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Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…