Marcello Hernández shrugs off critics as his SNL rise leads to a Netflix special

Marcello Hernández is shrugging off critics as his rise on Saturday Night Live leads to a Netflix stand-up special, “American Boy,” set to premiere January 7, 2026, on Netflix.​

Marcello Hernández joined the Saturday Night Live cast in 2022, becoming one of the show’s youngest current cast members and a frequent presence in sketches and Weekend Update segments.

On Saturday Night Live, he is known for recurring characters, including Domingo, the not‑so‑secret lover of a bride whose friends sing parodic pop songs about their trysts, and the Movie Guy, a cinema usher who discusses films he has not seen in broken English.​

Domingo became a viral hit for Hernández on Saturday Night Live, appearing in a rare non‑political opening sketch earlier in the season and later reprised in the SNL50 anniversary special.

The character also gained wider attention when Hernández played Domingo in a routine at a Sabrina Carpenter concert, a clip that spread quickly on social media. Hernández has said:

“A lot of people still call me Domingo on the street. I want to make it clear, I do have a name”.

On Weekend Update, Hernández’s Movie Guy character has drawn some criticism for relying on a heavily accented, “dorky” white guy persona, but Hernández has defended the bit as rooted in real family speech patterns.

In a recent interview with The New York Times, he explained that the Movie Guy was inspired by the kinds of malaprops he heard from relatives, like an aunt who once told him, “One day, you’re going to be like Matthew Naconifer,” mispronouncing “McConaughey”. He said:

“What am I supposed to do? Lie? We are who we are.”​

The Saturday Night Live star’s Netflix special: American Boy

Hernández’s Netflix special, American Boy, was filmed at the Olympia Theater in Miami and is set to debut January 7, 2026.

In the special, he dances victoriously with his mother on stage, then recounts his upbringing as the child of immigrants in Miami, raised mostly by his mother, who fled Cuba and lived in Spain and the Dominican Republic before coming to the United States.​

He talks about being diagnosed with attention deficit disorder as a child, saying in the routine: 

“Everybody told me I have A.D.D., and I told my mom, ‘I have A.D.D.,’ and she said, ‘No.’ So, I don’t have A.D.D”.

His mother, Isabel Cancela, appears as a recurring foil in the material, and in an email she later wrote that she was proud to be a character in his comedy. She said, 

“When your children honor you in their own way, it feels like a pat on the back from God telling you that you did a good job even after everything you had to go through.” 

In “American Boy,” Hernández also touches on immigration, acknowledging that he does not know much about politics or law but noting how many important people in his life are immigrants. He says in the special:

“Maybe we are doing crime, but the biggest crime that we’re doing is working illegally, which is a pretty solid crime”.

He adds: “Latinos do fun, exciting crimes,” a line that has drawn both laughter and online debate.​

Early career and pandemic struggles

Before Saturday Night Live, Hernández was a college graduate who had given up a promising soccer career to pursue performing.

In 2020, as the pandemic shut down live comedy, he found himself selling medication over the phone while living with his mother, fearing his showbiz dreams were over before they had really begun.​

He later described that period as a time when he felt his career was “stymied” and that he was “dangling from a bottom rung”. He said, 

“I always remember that feeling. That feeling 100 percent drives me very hard”.​

Hernández eventually returned to stand‑up, hustling his way into gigs and opening for comics like Tim Dillon, Gilbert Gottfried, and Mark Viera.

In 2022, he was selected for the New Faces of Comedy showcase at Montreal’s Just For Laughs festival, a breakthrough that helped lead to his casting on Saturday Night Live later that year.​

Response to criticism and the White House video

Hernández has faced online criticism for some of his Saturday Night Live characters, with some viewers calling the Movie Guy an ethnic stereotype and others objecting when his dialogue is in Spanish or when Domingo appears in the show’s opening sketch.

Sometimes he responds directly on social media; at one point, he said, his mother would chase off critics using a fake Instagram account, though not at his instruction.​

He has also been an unwilling participant in a social media video posted by the White House that used promotional footage he recorded with Sabrina Carpenter when she hosted Saturday Night Live in October.

In the original clip, Carpenter said she needed to “arrest someone for being too hot”; Hernández playfully extended his wrists and said, 

“Oh well, I turn myself in”.

The White House version altered Carpenter’s line to say she wanted to arrest someone for being “too illegal,” then kept Hernández’s response and cut to footage of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arresting people.​

Asked how he felt about being used in that video, Hernández said: 

“They’re going to do what they’re going to do. I like to focus on my work. I’m not going to stop. I’ll take whatever comes with it”.​

Lorne Michaels and the future

Lorne Michaels, the creator and executive producer of Saturday Night Live, has described Hernández as “the real thing” and said he has improved every year on the show. Michaels said,

“He was brought up well, he has real values, and he’s solid. I don’t want to gush, but he’s gotten better every year”.​

Michaels also noted that, like all Saturday Night Live cast members, Hernández is a resource that needs to be used strategically, and that the show’s job is to find big episodes and breakout roles for all its performers. He said, 

“Because he played soccer — and I go to baseball games with him — he understands the notion of a team. A team needs the other players, and you want them to be good, too”.​

In the months ahead, Hernández will appear in films including 72 Hours, a Netflix comedy starring Kevin Hart, and Shrek 5, while continuing to write and perform on Saturday Night Live.

Stay tuned for more updates.