Are SNL Guest Hosts Paid? If So, How Much?

There was a joke on Saturday night’s SNL where guest-host Melissa McCarthy mentioned getting her check and going home.

Anyone know how much (if anything) SNL guest hosts are paid? Scale?

Just a wild guess, but I would imagine hosts get paid whatever scale is for TV shows.

Most do it for the honor of doing it, or perhaps hyping their movie/album/TV show or whatever, or simply because they have fun doing it.

That would me my guess too - it would be against union rules for them to get nothing at all, no?

Probably more than scale but you’d probably be disappointed. Used to be you’d get paid $510.00 for appearing as a guest on Johnny Carson. That was scale *then. *But you were probably in LA anyway and it was just a couple of hours to show up, get made up, talk to a Production Assistant, wait in a green room, then appear.

I think the SNL week begins on Tuesday. There’s probably some sketches already written and the writers are still busily writing and/or rewriting until Friday. So a host has to be there for a week. SNL probably provides hotel accomodations, meals, and transportation to the studio.

Lorne offered the Beatles $3,000.00 remember?

When Justin Timberlake hosted SNL in 2009, he told Entertainment Tonight that it was the best $5000 he ever made. I don’t know if it’s gone up since then.

To piggyback on this a little, I’d be curious to know how much the ‘cameo’ guests get paid, like DiCaprio the weekend before last.