Ariana DeBose and Kate McKinnon Duet, Discover Sappho Together on SNL

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The West Side Story star and the Saturday Night Live veteran's sketches together were a gift to queer women complete with nods to Dana Scully and the Indigo Girls.

Tracy E. Gilchrist

Tracy E. Gilchrist is the VP of Editorial and Special Projects at equalpride. A media veteran, she writes about the intersections of LGBTQ+ equality and pop culture. Previously, she was the editor-in-chief of The Advocate and the first feminism editor for the 55-year-old brand. In 2017, she launched the company's first podcast, The Advocates. She is an experienced broadcast interviewer, panel moderator, and public speaker who has delivered her talk, "Pandora's Box to Pose: Game-changing Visibility in Film and TV," at universities throughout the country.

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Tracy E. Gilchrist

January 15 2022 9:00 PM EST

January 16 2022 1:03 PM EST

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This week's Saturday Night Live was the most exciting for queer women since Kristen Stewart and Vanessa Bayer made out sopping wet on a pile of Totinos. Following the cold open, the first episode of 2022 kicked off with the show's host, West Side Story breakout star Ariana DeBose, and Kate McKinnon singing a medley from the beloved musical. When they got to the lyric "I feel pretty and witty and gay" from the song "I Feel Pretty," the two queer women fist-bumped.

Later in the show, DeBose and McKinnon appeared together in a sketch where they played alleged Sappho scholars delivering a lecture at Cornell University. In their talk, they claimed to have unearthed and translated some of Sappho's complete poems that included lines like, "Wind in mountains. Eyes of Goldenrod. We broke up, Helena. Get your sandals out of here."

As the poems became increasingly more specific and loaded with relatable modern issues for queer women, some attending the lecture doubted the veracity of the Sappho experts' findings. Among the artifacts were an ancient drinking vessel labeled "Nalgene" and a vase emblazoned with Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully in The X-Files. However, a final scroll they shared appeared to prove they were legitimate researchers of Sappho. "I went to the doctor / I went to the mountains / I look to the children / I drank from the fountain..." read the scroll. And if anything proves lesbian legitimacy it's the Indigo Girls' "Closer to Fine."