“Spot On”: Miles Teller’s Peyton Manning impression on SNL cold premiere leaves fans in awe

Whiplash fame, Miles Teller, who tasted success earlier this year with Top Gun: Maverick, became the first guest celebrity to host the Saturday Night Live Season 48 premiere. Teller surprised many fans by making a strong impression on former football quarterback Peyton Manning.

The Top Gun: Maverick star imitated Peyton while spoofing the setup of the latter's TV broadcast "Manningcast," an alternate presentation of ESPN's Monday Night Football hosted by the Manning brothers. Miles Teller was joined by Andrew Dismukes, who played Peyton's brother Eli Manning.

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SNL Season 48 Cold Open: Miles Teller pulls off an astonishing yet hilarious impression of Peyton Manning

Miles Teller and Andrew Dismukes, as the Manning brothers, ripped apart SNL in their expert dissection during cold open (Image via NBC)

As mentioned, the SNL Season 48 Cold Open saw the first-time celebrity host, Teller, pulling off a spot-on yet funny imitation of Peyton Manning. He and Andrew Dismukes (as Eli Manning) imitated a Manningcast spoof while providing expert analysis of the premiere's opening sketch.

The pair analyzed a scene featuring former US President Donald Trump (played by James Austin Johnson) at Mar-a-Lago. The Monday Night Football-like dissection of the skit saw an influx of plenty of self-aware jokes, with Teller ridiculing the writing and usual Saturday Night Live tropes.

At one point, Miles Teller even showed the stats of unfunny jokes of the show on screen in Monday Night Football style, while saying:

"Let's take a look at the stats so far. Fourteen attempted jokes this episode, only one mild laugh, and three chuckles."

The host also praised the producers for making the wise decision to bring in Kendrick Lamar as the musical guest in order to save the show from its unfunny jokes. Here's what he mentioned:

"Thank God they've got Kendrick Lamar because that's the only reason anyone is tuning in."

The actors continued their amusing analysis as former professional snowboarder and skateboarder Shaun White appeared in the sketch. He played the role of the special master in charge of Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago documents. The surprise appearance of the three-time Olympic gold medalist felicited a cheeky remark from Teller, who said:

"Shaun White — that is just gratuitous stunt casting."

Besides White, the three-time celebrity host for SNL and Mad Men star Jon Hamm also appeared as a surprise guest during the cold open. Hamm addressed his appearance on SNL and took a dig at Miles Teller by calling him "unfamous.'' He said:

"Well, sometimes they need to bring in a real celebrity when the host isn't that famous. I mean, when they couldn't get the star of the big summer movie, your Tom Cruise or your Jon Hamm, they had to get the co-star,"

However, Teller was quick to come up with a witty reply to Hamm. He poked fun at his Top Gun co-star's past appearances as an SNL celebrity host by saying:

"Well, I heard they rarely put the host in cold opens," Teller shot back, "so when they do, it is special."

Teller's spot-on impression and witty responses alongside self-aware jokes during the expert analysis left the netizens amazed, who reacted on Twitter as follows:

For the unversed, the first episode of Saturday Night Live featuring Miles Teller as the celebrity host aired on October 1, 2022, on NBC and Peacock concurrently. However, the following episodes will become available on Peacock a day after their NBC telecast.

Brendan Gleeson has been confirmed as the celebrity host for the second episode.