Marcello Hernández Has Something Big on the Horizon

Shirt and trousers by Amiri. Necklace by David Yurman.

“This hour is my whole life, you know?”

Marcello Hernández is not talking about our hour-long Zoom interview, which the twenty-eight-year-old comedian does almost entirely off camera. (“After I do an interview, I try to immediately forget that I did it,” he deadpans.) No, he’s referring to his new stand-up routine, which—at the time of our chat in early July—he’s touring around the country. The goal? See what works, see what doesn’t, and shape the material into a Netflix special that will tape later this fall. He’s more than a little obsessed. “It’s my baby,” he says. “It’s my wedding.”

If it’s Hernández’s big day, expect an incredibly fun ceremony. Almost as soon as the Cuban-Dominican American performer joined Saturday Night Live in 2022, it became obvious that he is the most dynamic cast member the show has seen since Kate McKinnon or Bill Hader. His superpowers include: a detonate-your-TV-screen manic energy, the ability to create instantly meme-able characters for SNL’s scrolling audience, and a knack for channeling his upbringing as a Miami-born child of immigrants into hilarious, quick-witted sketches. “That’s where a lot of my comedy comes from,” Hernández says, “is that my parents went through a lot to give me a good life.”

Look no further than Domingo, the sexy, singing wedding crasher, or the Hernández-led “Protective Mom” sketches, in which he relives a familiar scene from his upbringing within the walls of Studio 8H: a college student brings a girl home to his savagely judgmental Latina mother (played by none other than Pedro Pascal, by the way). The sketch was so popular they revived it when Bad Bunny hosted later that year, with the musical superstar playing his aunt. Hernández says his love for the work is about more than just the viral popularity. “[It] was very sweet because it was very real,” Hernández says. “That’s where you get a lot of the feeling of reward—is when you make something that you feel like you showed a piece of yourself and people resonated with it.”

Hernández already has mastered the trickiest art form ever created by man: the “Weekend Update” guest segment. The characters he portrays are simple but burrow into your brain: the shit-talking earthquake that struck New York City last year; the fratty but extremely supportive boyfriend; and the Movie Guy, who—spoiler—doesn’t really watch movies. But Hernández’s most subversive work is in his longer “Update” segments, when he appears as himself riffing on a topic and trying to say, as he puts it, “the truest thing in the funniest way.” Perhaps his best is a riff on the upswing of male depression, which he says has an easy fix: Just be a woman. (“I was a proud Latina woman for many years, Colin,” Hernández riffs.) Its reach went a little further than he expected, with foreign-language YouTube channels weighing in on his routine: “I didn’t expect Russians to be like [in an exaggerated Russian accent], Yes, men! We need to work on the way we talk about our emotions!”

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Sure enough, Hollywood has come calling. Hernández earned a role in Adam Sandler’s Happy Gilmore 2 and will soon star alongside Kevin Hart in 72 Hours, a Netflix comedy about a bachelor-party weekend gone wrong. Hernández isn’t exactly the type to stop, drop, and celebrate a win. (“My heart was beating fast that day for sure,” is just about all he has to say about SNL50.) But he gets genuinely excited sharing a story about how Hart, a longtime hero, sent him a voice note to congratulate him for his work on the movie. (You’re doing the right thing, man, just keep going.) What should’ve been a digital keepsake, however, disappeared from his iPhone per the default settings. Hernández was crushed at first, but Hart gave him something even better in its place. “I told Kevin, and then he made a funny video—I told him to tell my mom that I’m doing well,” Hernández says. “And he told my mom, ‘We have your son!’”

Ultimately, Hernández wants to tell stories that resemble his family dynamics. Think George Lopez and Everybody Hates Chris. In those shows, he saw struggling parents who would do anything to create a better life for their children—even if it involved some well-intentioned screaming. “It’s a really good perspective into the feeling that a kid has when his parents are very stressed because they’ve been through a lot and they want everything to come out right in their life,” he says.

Lest we get ahead of ourselves: Hernández still has to perfect the Netflix special. He prefers to keep the details of the routine close to the vest, telling me only this: “I would call it a fun love letter to my upbringing and my family. I’m sharing with people the way I grew up so that they get to know me a bit better. And then I can do whatever else I want to do in my career, but at least they’ll know who I am.”

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Is imposter syndrome still a thing for Hernández? Fear of failure? Absolutely. “It’s hard to tell yourself, like, You’re supposed to be here,” he says. “No matter how hard you’ve worked, if you come from a hard enough circumstance or past, there were many moments where this didn’t seem like a possibility. So all this stuff is wild, man.” And it doesn’t hurt that he’s found a sturdy support system, which includes Pascal and Bad Bunny. “In those two guys, I definitely found two people that, when I talk about my parents and [when] they talk to me, they feel like, Yeah, I know. I got you.”

As for the special, well, I couldn’t wait for Netflix. So I went to see Hernández perform in my hometown of Pittsburgh. His act features brilliant riffs on the terrors of shopping-mall bathrooms, how it feels to be the Latino kid at a family gathering, and a Full House–inspired bit that had the sold-out crowd in hysterics. But what truly makes it feel like his coming of age as a comedian is the final bit. Turning uncharacteristically political, he gets huge laughs while explaining exactly why he thinks immigrants in this country will be just fine: Kick us out and we’ll just come back! It’s fully him. And it may be the best thing he’s done yet.

Story by Brady LangmannPhotographed by Micaiah CarterStyled by Chloe HartsteinGrooming by Jenny Sauce using Orveda Skincare and OribeSet Design by Michael SturgeonTailoring by Yana GalbshteinVisual Director: James MorrisEntertainment Director: Andrea CuttlerVideo Director: Amanda KabbabeVideo Senior Producer: Brian Murray-RealDirector of Photography: Alvah HolmesAssociate Cinematographer: Jay AguirreVideo Producer: Ali Buchalter

Video Editor: Jeff Sharkey