Ryan gives Harry an advance

Busy weekend for Harry Styles. On Friday he was in Manchester, performing tracks from his new album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally (shorted to Kissco by his fans), for a Netflix special that dropped yesterday.

He didn’t stay in England long though because by Saturday night he was in New York, and basically took over Ryan Gosling’s monologue on Saturday Night Live.

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Harry is hosting this coming weekend, he would have had to be in NYC anyway but of course the show wanted to leverage every bit they could out of him – and given his popularity, it’s an obvious request to make, and it’s great that he agreed to it but it’s even better that Ryan ran with it too. In an industry full of egos, with agents and publicists angling for top billing, Ryan turning this isn’t a “hey what about me” and making himself the joke worked for the occasion and checked all the boxes.

You can tell, though, how well-like Ryan is at 8H. And I wonder at this point, now that he’s hosted four times and is one away from the Five Timers Club, if he’s the host who has been around and/or provoked the most breaking. Every time Ryan Gosling is on SNL either he breaks or the cast members break. As someone who considers herself to be an SNL faithful, breaking is almost a privilege granted not only by the show but by the audience. Because with Ryan, the breaking is a result of him completely giving himself over to the silliness, he is the most unserious, committed to being utterly stupid, while he’s already shown us how serious he is about being there, having filmed multiple promos and digital shorts, and singing more than once during the week. 

Also I love the photo shoot, especially that shot of him as Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club.

As for Harry, I’ve not watched the Manchester special but I did listen to Kissco a few times over the weekend and, overall, as a complete work, like front to back, it’s landing kinda flat for me, although live performance might change how I feel about the tracks.

Here he is with Zoë Kravitz at lunch today, in case there was any question about them still being together. I doubt we’ll actually see her when he hosts SNL on Saturday but backstage in the dressing room and then the after-party? Depends on whether or not she skips Oscar weekend.