Pete Davidson & Mikey Day Made Bridgerton's Love Scenes Weird in SNL's Sketch
Mikey Day and Pete Davidson play intimacy coordinators who make Bridgerton's steamy scenes extremely awkward.
A lot has changed in the world of Bridgerton since its first season, and that's by design. The show was never meant to follow one sole couple's romantic journey: Like the Julia Quinn books the series is based on, each season tells a fresh love story about a new pairing. While Bridgerton Season 3, Part 2's primary focus is on Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) and Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton), back in 2021, Saturday Night Live capitalized on the fervor over the first onscreen Bridgerton couple that left audiences hot and bothered: Simon Bassett (Regé-Jean Page) and Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor).
When Page hosted the February 20, 2021 episode of SNL, the first season had only debuted two months prior. Fans were under the thrall of Page's character, the Duke of Hastings, and his steamy scenes with Daphne. As Page himself described it in his SNL monologue, Bridgerton Season 1 was “the show that made everyone turn to their moms and say, ‘You know what? Never mind, I don’t think we should watch this together.' It's a bit of a racy show."
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Inspired by the country's crush on Page, the episode's inevitable Bridgerton-inspired sketch wasn't a parody, instead honing in on the famous sex scenes. Specifically, what goes into filming them. In "Bridgerton Intimacy Coordinator," Pete Davidson and Mikey Day play two on-set "experts" who are terrible at their job.
Pete Davidson and Mikey Day make it weird on SNL's Bridgerton set
The sketch begins with Page in character as the Duke, acting opposite Phoebe Dynevor as Daphne (Chloe Fineman's impression has layers here!). They're recreating the famous "I burn for you" honeymoon scene from the real show, and Page's familiar dialogue is enough to elicit screams of delight from the live audience.
That's when the director (Kate McKinnon) yells "Cut!" and lets them know they'll be rehearing their sex scene with an intimacy coordinator. But not the one they're used to — "Paula had a COVID exposure at a fundraiser for COVID relief," McKinnon's character tells them. Instead, they're working with a guy named Richie (Mikey Day) and his nephew, Randy (Pete Davidson).
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Intimacy coordinators are hired on film and TV sets to ensure that actors feel comfortable while shooting, well, intimate scenes. But Davidson and Day's characters explain that they kind of fell into the gig.
"We worked in special effects for years," Day's Richie tells the Bridgerton stars.
"Yeah, explosions, wind, gross-out stuff," Randy adds.
"But not a lot of people are getting puked on in movies 'cause of COVID," Richie explains. "So we took a Zoom and got certified to do, you know, sex scene stuff."
The duo say they haven't read the script — "seemed like a girl show" — but tell the horrified actors that they "get the gist: You're brother and sister."
The two only get more mixed up from there, producing a variety of homemade tools and offering tonally-inappropriate changes to the scene. Ultimately, the sketch's laughs are all about Day and Davidson matching each other's deeply weird vibe.
Watch "Bridgerton Intimacy Coordinator" above, and stream all 49 seasons of Saturday Night Live on Peacock.
