Covid19 coronavirus: SNL jokes about New Zealand's pandemic response
Saturday Night Live is the latest international TV show to shout out to New Zealand's Covid-19 response.
The American comedy show featured a skit about a coronavirus family, featuring Call Me By Your Name actor Timothee Chalamet, who was the celebrity guest host.
Chalamet plays the Covid family disappointment -who was sent Down Under to infect the population.
New Zealand's pandemic response features in an SNL skit. Photo / SNL
"We paid to send you to New Zealand and now look. Zero cases! People are going to concerts there, it's a disgrace. Think of your poor mother Spanish influenza," the mother of the "Rona" family says.
"Now she infected the whole world and that was before airplanes," she tells Chalamet's character.
New Zealand currently has 56 active cases of Covid-19, which are all imported cases.
"If you don't start infecting again your career is over," the father threatens.
Actor Timothee Chalamet is the family disappointment in the skit. Photo / SNL
It's the latest international show to mention NZ's pandemic response. In October, BBC's Spitting Image depicted Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern as a Mary Poppins puppet.
The puppet sings during the episode of the satire show: "I put us into lockdown faster than the Yanks and Brits.
"Now NZ's virus-free, we kicked it in the tits."
And last week US talk show host Stephen Colbert shouted out to New Zealand, reminiscing about his trip to Aotearoa in 2019.
"If I can send a message to that slightly younger version of me from the end of 2019 I'd say: Don't leave New Zealand," he says.
"They figure out how to contain this thing that's gonna start spreading around the world in about a month. I know you don't know what I'm talking about and this sounds crazy but believe me: buy toilet paper."
The talk show host, and Lord of the Rings fanatic, spent six days in the country last October filming The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which averages 3 million views an episode
