Tuesday, May 19, 2026

HBO’s Last of Us Flirts with 1 Million Viewers, But Star Pedro Pascal Didn’t Help SNL

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Sunday night, HBO’s “The Last of Us” pulled within a whisker of 1 million viewers at 9pm on the main channel. HBO says another 8 million watched on HBO Max and through kaleidoscopes or something. But 991,000 went to their TVs and turned on HBO.

The show is enormously popular and growing by leaps and bounds. No one’s denying that. But star Pedro Pascal didn’t help the ratings on “Saturday Night Live” when he hosted this past Saturday. Total audience was up just slightly with 4.3 million. The prior week was 4.165 million total. Pascal’s musical guest was Coldplay, which didn’t get a sales kick of their appearance. Their latest album, “Music of the Spheres,” is number 26 on iTunes.

“SNL” is skipping next Saturday, right in the middle of ratings sweeps. They’ll be back on February 25th with Woody Harrelson and Jack White, a show I feel like I’ve already seen.

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Roger Friedman
Roger Friedmanhttps://www.showbiz411.com
Roger Friedman is the founder and editor-in-chief of Showbiz411. He wrote the FOX411 column on FoxNews.com from 1999 to 2009 and previously edited Fame magazine and wrote the "Intelligencer" column at New York magazine. His bylines have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, Vogue, Details, and the Miami Herald. He is a voting member of the Critics Choice Awards (Film and Television branches), and his movie reviews are tracked by Rotten Tomatoes. is articles have appeared in dozens of publications over the years including New York Magazine, where he wrote the Intelligencer column in the mid 90s and covered the OJ Simpson trial, and Fox News (when it wasn't so crazy) where he covered Michael Jackson. With D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, he co-produced the 2002 documentary "Only the Strong Survive," which screened at Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.

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