Garth Brooks can do it all.
No, I really mean that. I’m not just lazily saying that he’s talented. The man can quite literally do anything that he sets his mind to, and it usually works out for him.
In case you need the evidence presented right in front of you, Garth can:
-Perform in front of sold out football stadiums
-Sell his albums exclusively at Bass Pro Shop
–Launch a separate music career underneath an alter ego
-Dodge accusations of being a serial killer
-Host the long-running sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live
And sticking with that last career accomplishment, not only did he host SNL, he pulled double duty on it. In November of 1999, Garth hosted the NBC staple show, and the musical guest was Chris Gaines (Garth’s punk/emo rock alter ego).
That’s comical within itself, so it’s no surprise that it worked on Saturday Night Live. His double duty appearance was actually his second time hosting the show, as he had been called in to host an episode in the 1998 season as well.
Brooks is widely regarded as a great host when you look at the history of Saturday Night Live, probably because he was honestly really good in all of the skits. It was during his very first SNL hosting gig that he donned a dress and played a character in a skit called “Old French Whore.”
What character did the country music star play in the sketch? Pardon my French, but Garth played the titular “Old French Whore.” Probably can’t get away with that idea in the 2020s…
Tina Fey, who is now a very renowned and well-known actress and writer in comedy, had just got started in the SNL writing room at this point, and was the mind behind the skit that called for Garth to put on a dress and do his best French accent. She confessed to Conan O’Brien that she intentionally wrote that skit to embarrass Garth after he turned down an idea she had to make him play a singing cowboy (not very original, I must say).
She said:
“I was kind of insulted by that and I remember I purposely tried to embarrass him in the read through, So I wrote this scene where he played an old French prostitute.
That’s as far away from cowboy as you can get, right? And he did, and he did a good job and we ended up doing it on the show.”
And I don’t mean this to come off as disrespectful, but it was almost scary how natural he was in the part. It must have been all of the practice with Chris Gaines that allowed him to so easily show off his comedy chops.
The sketch’s loose premise is a gameshow where contestants were paired up with…we’ll just say women of the night, and had to answer questions that were somewhat related to their field of work. And the great Will Ferrell handled the hosting duties.
Garth was the smartest and most sophisticated of all of the “women” on the gameshow, and managed to pull off a pretty decent French accent. I’ll let you be the judge of it, but all in all, it was a funny skit (better than most of the stuff SNL does now) and Garth was a powerhouse in it.
Enjoy it now… the second Garth’s team sees this post they’ll have it scrubbed from the internet. Much like most of Garth’s more bizarre content.
You can also check out his monologue from that night:
