Saturday Night Live closed out its 49th season with a sketch that saw the NYPD order a security detail for character actors across the Big Apple, taking heed after a homeless man slugged longtime Adam Sandler sidekick Steve Buscemi earlier this month.
Host Jake Gyllenhaal as a police sergeant took inspiration from the random attack on a Brooklyn street to kickstart the new task force for the easily recognizable, but indistinguishable actors, dubbed the “Organization to Hinder Harmful Incidents in Manhattan,” or, “Oh, him.”
“Summer is coming up and we are seeing an increase in random acts of violence across our streets. Just this week, national treasure Steve Buscemi was punched while walking through Kips Bay,” Gyllenhaal said at a press conference in perfect imitation of a born-and-raised New York cop.
“These types of attacks cannot and will not be tolerated,” he added.
Buscemi’s attacker socked him in the face on the morning of May 8 — causing the former FDNY firefighter to suffer “bleeding to his eye, swelling, bruising, and substantial pain” — before casually walking away
While jarring, the incident is far from isolated — it comes three years after Rick Moranis was punched while walking on the Upper West Side, and just one month after Buscemi’s “Boardwalk Empire” co-star Michael Stuhlbarg was also randomly targeted by a rock-welding homeless man on the Upper East Side.
“Oh, that guy!” the crowd of journalists cooed as Stuhlbarg’s face came up on the NYPD screen, with Heidi Gardner adding that she could never place his name: “I always want to call him Tom something.”
Gyllenhaal brought the focus back to the issue at hand: that “character actors are being targeted.”
“Simply put, it’s actors whose faces you can remember, names you cannot,” he explained.
“So when you may be a character actor if you’ve ever been on the TV show Boardwalk Empire. You have a face that makes casting directors go, ‘Oh interesting.’ Your IMDB page has over 100 entries, but all your characters just have a first name. You’ve ever done a three-episode arc on a TV show whose title is just letters,” he continued, panning to a screen listing Big Apple classics “SVU” and “NCIS.”
Not to worry, Gyllenhaal explained, the NYPD was on the case.
“We’re offering protection to character actors we know are at risk. We’ve assigned the security detail to Stephen Root. We’re asking that you avoid mass transit ever played a girlfriend on “Seinfeld” or a boyfriend on “Sex in the City.” And we’ve asked Paul Giamatti to shelter in place.”
The lengthy steps to protect the well-loved, but not easily identifiable actors all fall under the fittingly named “Oh, him” task force.
Gyllenhaal then rattled off a series of actors who should be on high alert, but whose names he struggled to place, including “this lady” Judy Greer, “this guy, he’s in everything” Walton Goggins and “of course” Stephen Tobolowsky.
“Oh! I want to say his name is Tim something!” Gardner said again.
“It’s Stephen Tobolowsky. I just said it,” an exhausted Gyllenhaal answered.
“Mad Men” star Jon Hamm made a surprise appearance in the skit, asking Gyllenhaal, “Would an actor like say Jon Hamm have to be worried?”
“I can’t get punched,” Hamm said. “Without this beautiful face, I’m just a tall guy with a perfect body.”
“No, I think you’re fine,” Gyllenhaal quipped.