The Five-Timers Club

The season pages this site counts from credit 27 hosts with five or more nights, the number that makes a host a member of the Five-Timers Club. Alec Baldwin has the most, with 17. The most recent to reach five is Jack Black, on 4 April 2026.

A sketch in place of a monologue

The club began on the show itself. In NBC's account of it, the concept was first introduced in Tom Hanks's episode of 8 December 1990, his fifth as host. In the sketch, Paul Simon, Steve Martin and Elliott Gould, wearing the robe-like jackets that have since become the club's uniform, welcome Hanks into a wood-paneled room. The man working the coat check was Conan O'Brien, at the time a writer on the show.

Hanks was joining a group that already had members. The same account says plainly that he was not the first Five-Timer, and that the first was Buck Henry. The list at the foot of this page is ordered by the night each host reached five, so everyone above Hanks in it got there before there was a club to join.

Not everyone in that first sketch is in the list, though. The season pages credit Paul Simon as host on 4 nights, so he is not in the list below.

How the show has staged it since

The club was back in Justin Timberlake's monologue on his fifth night, in March 2013. Stereogum's write-up of the episode named who was waiting for him: Paul Simon, Steve Martin, Alec Baldwin, Tom Hanks, Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, Martin Short and Candice Bergen.

By John Mulaney's fifth, in February 2022, the joke had turned on the club. In Entertainment Tonight's report, Steve Martin and Candice Bergen suggested it should be kept for celebrities rather than comedy writers, and Conan O'Brien stormed in to defend Mulaney: "You start here and you can do great things!" Tina Fey and Elliott Gould appeared as well. The same report notes that Paul Rudd's own induction, two months earlier, had been spoiled by the coronavirus surge in New York, which forced that episode to be retooled.

Kristen Wiig's fifth, in April 2024, went further. Her monologue, as NBC Insider describes it, had Matt Damon, Martin Short, Paula Pell, Jon Hamm, Fred Armisen and Will Forte suggesting that the club was no longer that big a deal, with Pell complaining that the jackets were handed out to everybody, while Paul Rudd was there hoping for a Five-Timers sketch. Damon was not a Five-Timer, and Short was at that point a four-timer. Ryan Gosling turned up to lint-roll her new jacket.

When Short did reach five, that December, the show opened with Tom Hanks, who, JoBlo reported, took credit for creating the club. Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Scarlett Johansson, Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Emma Stone and John Mulaney followed, and Jimmy Fallon was given the honor of putting the jacket on Short.

Every member, in the order they reached five

  1. Buck Henry: 10 nights, first on 17 January 1976, fifth on 19 November 1977
  2. Steve Martin: 16 nights, first on 23 October 1976, fifth on 22 April 1978
  3. Elliott Gould: 6 nights, first on 10 January 1976, fifth on 16 February 1980
  4. Chevy Chase: 8 nights, first on 18 February 1978, fifth on 6 December 1986
  5. Candice Bergen: 5 nights, first on 8 November 1975, fifth on 19 May 1990
  6. Tom Hanks: 10 nights, first on 14 December 1985, fifth on 8 December 1990
  7. Danny DeVito: 6 nights, first on 15 May 1982, fifth on 9 January 1993
  8. John Goodman: 13 nights, first on 2 December 1989, fifth on 7 May 1994
  9. Alec Baldwin: 17 nights, first on 21 April 1990, fifth on 10 December 1994
  10. Bill Murray: 5 nights, first on 7 March 1981, fifth on 20 February 1999
  11. Christopher Walken: 7 nights, first on 20 January 1990, fifth on 19 May 2001
  12. Drew Barrymore: 6 nights, first on 20 November 1982, fifth on 3 February 2007
  13. Justin Timberlake: 5 nights, first on 11 October 2003, fifth on 9 March 2013
  14. Ben Affleck: 5 nights, first on 19 February 2000, fifth on 18 May 2013
  15. Tina Fey: 6 nights, first on 23 February 2008, fifth on 19 December 2015
  16. Scarlett Johansson: 7 nights, first on 14 January 2006, fifth on 11 March 2017
  17. Melissa McCarthy: 6 nights, first on 1 October 2011, fifth on 13 May 2017
  18. The Rock: 5 nights, first on 18 March 2000, fifth on 20 May 2017
  19. Jonah Hill: 5 nights, first on 15 March 2008, fifth on 3 November 2018
  20. Will Ferrell: 6 nights, first on 14 May 2005, fifth on 23 November 2019
  21. Paul Rudd: 5 nights, first on 15 November 2008, fifth on 18 December 2021
  22. John Mulaney: 6 nights, first on 14 April 2018, fifth on 26 February 2022
  23. Woody Harrelson: 5 nights, first on 18 November 1989, fifth on 25 February 2023
  24. Emma Stone: 5 nights, first on 23 October 2010, fifth on 2 December 2023
  25. Kristen Wiig: 5 nights, first on 11 May 2013, fifth on 6 April 2024
  26. Martin Short: 5 nights, first on 6 December 1986, fifth on 21 December 2024
  27. Jack Black: 5 nights, first on 19 January 2002, fifth on 4 April 2026

The counts and dates in the opening paragraph and the list come from this site's episode file, read from Wikipedia's season pages, and a night is counted as set out in how this site counts. Every other sentence links the source it was checked against. Every host and every night is in the hosts table, and corrections are welcome at info@snlroster.com.