From Ryan Gosling spiraling over the font of James Cameron’s Avatar title to Kim Kardashian doubling down with “I’m a mother, millionaire, law student, and billionaire,” SNL has long been the place where big stars happily trade polish for punchlines. The latest recruit to the tradition is Cynthia Erivo, who has brought the spirit across to SNL UK.

The actress joined a Nigerian spoof of Wicked, the musical blockbuster that made her a household name, and the result is a send-up with its own accent, rhythm, and a very recognizable cameo.

In the SNL UK sketch, Cynthia Erivo swaps the green skin of Elphaba for Glinda’s signature blonde, though with a twist: a wig paired with a pink velour tracksuit. Opposite Ayoade Bamgboye’s Elphaba, she leads a low-budget, gloriously over-the-top Nollywood retelling in which the unlikely friends set off to meet the Wizard of LagOz.

The biggest departure comes in the feud. Where the film lets Glinda and Elphaba trade barbs through the song 'What Is This Feeling?', the SNL UK version skips the singing altogether, and Glinda settles matters with a slap.

The Nigerian Wicked sketch is not the first time SNL has poked fun at Wicked. When Ariana Grande took the host’s chair, her monologue playfully took aim at the musical’s sequel, joking that when something is already perfect, there is no reason to make a second one. Coming from the woman who plays Glinda, the line landed as a self-aware wink, and it set the tone for the show’s ongoing habit of treating the Oz franchise as fair game.

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This sketch feels like the encore, given how Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo made the Wicked press tour impossible to look away from.

Few press tours have been as impossible to look away from as the Wicked run. Between the premieres and the promotional stops, Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo kept finding new ways to turn routine appearances into moments that fans replayed on loop. Tears arrived at random, often mid-conversation and with no particular trigger, and the two seemed perfectly at ease letting them flow.

Then there was Erivo’s protective streak. When someone crossed a line with Grande, Erivo moved faster than a trained bodyguard could, and she stayed close afterward, holding Grande by the arm rather than the hand once it had been shaken. It was the kind of instinctive gesture no publicist could script, and it helped cement the press tour as a run built on out-of-the-box moments.

After a press tour that never played by the script, it only makes sense that Cynthia Erivo’s Nigerian Wicked detour goes off-script too.

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What do you think about the Wicked spoof? Let us know in the comments.