Daniel Craig Learns of His Viral ‘SNL’ Meme Introducing The Weeknd: ‘I Don’t Know What That Is, But Thank You’

“That’s lovely," the James Bond actor said of the recurring weekend-welcoming meme. "I suppose I’d have to have social media to know what that was all about.”

daniel-craig
Getty

Image via Getty/Frazer Harrison

daniel-craig

Someone finally told Daniel Craig that a clip of him from Saturday Night Live in March 2020 made him a weekly meme.

When the popularity of the viral moment was brought up in a new interview with the New York Times, Craig’s response was a question.

“What is that?” the 53-year-old asked after writer Dave Itzkoff brought up the fact that the SNL clip of him floods his timeline every Friday.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Weeknd,” Craig says in the video. It’s taken from Season 45, when the James Bond actor hosted and was introducing the superstar musical guest to the stage. Right before the clip ends, Craig offers a sort of exhale-and-shrug that observers have taken as a hat tip to the literal weekend, and applause can be heard from the studio audience.

When Itzkoff explained the meme is a way to usher in any given weekend, Craig was still inquisitive. 

“They do? It’s amazing. I don’t know what that is, but thank you,” he said. “That’s lovely. I suppose I’d have to have social media to know what that was all about.”

Even the Weeknd had a laugh about it the SNL meme on Twitter in May.

In April, the Los Angeles Times caught up with the person behind the Twitter account @CraigWeekend, who, at around 7 p.m. ET every Friday, tweets the clip of Craig. Miles Riehle, an 18-year-old from Orange County, California, said he gets “similar” replies to the meme every week.

“A lot of people have a lot of things to say about the way Daniel Craig says it, or a lot of people have things to say about the way he moves his arms. The reply I see most often is, ‘My weekend doesn’t get started until I see this tweeted out,’” he told the paper.

It seems Riehle isn’t a particularly huge fan of Craig or Abel Tesfaye. Still, the account has now amassed almost 476,000 followers. “It’s a silly four-second video, I don’t think it’s anything bigger than that,” he said. “Am I gonna keep doing this for the rest of my life? I don’t know.”

Indeed, the clip is from pre-pandemic times, taken from SNL’s March 7, 2020 episode—right before nationwide shutdowns. Craig’s long-awaited Bond film No Time to Die is out Oct. 8, the last of his 16-year run as the dashing MI6 agent, a role he kicked off with 2006’s Casino Royale.

Latest in Pop Culture