Mikey Madison Stars As Squidward In SNL's Live-Action SpongeBob SquarePants
HBO's prestige teen drama "Euphoria" has a great deal in common with the Cartoon Network series "SpongeBob SquarePants." Both shows follow a chaotic group of friends who are just trying to keep their heads above (or below) water in a world where nothing quite makes sense. How can all these high school kids afford top designer clothing just to wear casually to school? Which school administrator approved funding for this wildly inappropriate play? Why are there so many fires at the bottom of the ocean? These are just a few of life's unanswerable mysteries.
Fresh off an Oscar win for her performance in "Anora," actress Mikey Madison hosted this week's episode of "Saturday Night Live" and finally brought the worlds of "SpongeBob SquarePants" and "Euphoria" together. A sketch by comedy trio Please Don't Destroy sees Madison show up to the writing room dressed as SpongeBob's cranky neighbor Squidward, complete with his signature blue skin and bulbous nose.
Madison claims that the outfit is just something she casually threw on, but coincidentally she happens to have a pitch for an ambitious, HBO-style dramedy about SpongeBob and the gang. Check out Madison's live-action "SpongeBob" vision in the video above.
Bad Bunny's Shrek lives on in our hearts
If it seems like the members of Please Don't Destroy get exasperated by Mikey's Squidward antics a little too quickly, it's because this is a callback to an earlier sketch about a "Saturday Night Live" guest host showing up to a pitch meeting in a ridiculous, unexplained costume. In that instance it was Bad Bunny dressed as Shrek, and instead of an HBO dramedy he had written a feature film script for "Shrek 5," to be produced by ultra-hip indie studio A24. (The real "Shrek 5" has gone in a slightly different creative direction.)
In case any "SNL" fans missed that episode or didn't make the connection, Bad Bunny's Shrek gets a brief floating cameo in this sketch as John Higgins (dressed as SpongeBob's friend Patrick) reminisces about his time on "Shrek 5." The sketch is also packed with deep cut references for "SpongeBob SquarePants" fans — and yes, that's Madison's own pet puppy playing the role of Gary the Snail.
"Euphoria" season 3 has finally begun filming (three years after season 2 aired) and is expected to premiere in early 2026. If you're feeling impatient, you could try using one of those "SpongeBob SquarePants" interstitial cards to jump forward in time.