Pittsburgh featured in 'Saturday Night Live' skit

Pittsburgh TV news was featured on the season premiere of “Saturday Night Live.”

A local TV news report on a potential super-spreading event at the legal change of name office in the Pittsburgh federal building was the setting for a skit on “SNL” with a lot of sexual innuendo.

The anchor for Action News 9 - Eye on Pittsburgh, played by Heidi Gardner, passes to the reporter on scene (Mikey Day), saying, “Dylan, it seems like this story is going really viral?” After the mild joke, the rest of the skit becomes a game of sexual wordplay.

The reporter chastises the anchor and then proceeds to speak to several people who were in the office waiting to change their unfortunate names which all had sexual overtones. (The names will not be mentioned here.)

Host Chris Rock appears in the skit as a doctor from Pittsburgh’s contact tracing program speaking at a news conference. The doctor shares the names of people the fictional department is trying to contact. One of the more G-rated names is Burton Ernie.

A character played by Kenan Thompson appears in the skit wearing a Pittsburgh Steelers baseball hat. Dr. Johnson (Rock) thanks Jeffrey Epstein (Thompson) for his help.

Watch the clip here.

The show was hosted by Rock, who stepped onstage with a mask before snatching it off to perform his monologue. The show returned to a live studio audience after months away because of the coronavirus.

In 2009, Thompson portrayed another Pittsburgh character — Steelers linebacker James Harrison after the team won the Super Bowl.

And in 1997 Tracy Morgan played ex-Pirates outfielder Jermaine Allensworth in a clip.

I believe this was the first Pittsburgh-related skit on SNL since Tracy Morgan played ex-Pirates outfielder Jermaine Allensworth in 1997:https://t.co/LR0OwaY3Yf pic.twitter.com/4QrMvMH2Om

— Seth Rorabaugh (@SethRorabaugh) October 4, 2020