He made his “Saturday Night Live” debut early on Sunday, mocking his famously stilted Spanish, bantering with the episode’s host, Jimmy Fallon, and ensuring that, just under the wire, he would not become New York City’s first mayor since Abraham D. Beame never to appear on one of the city’s most visible cultural institutions.
The mayor’s segment, a surprise cameo just after midnight on the program’s satirical news skit, “Weekend Update,” was the first time that he agreed to go on the sketch show in his 12-year tenure, which ends on Jan. 1.
And the appearance doubled as definitive proof, for once, that Mr. Bloomberg, known for frequent weekend jaunts to Bermuda, was indeed in the city on a Saturday night.
Asked by Seth Meyers, a co-host of “Weekend Update,” what he planned to do after leaving office, Mr. Bloomberg said he would be “fulfilling a lifelong dream of enjoying a small soda on a nonsmoking beach.”
Mr. Fallon, sitting beside Mr. Bloomberg at the “Weekend Update” desk, noted that the mayor did not have a new job lined up.
“I’ve applied to teach Spanish at a few universities,” Mr. Bloomberg said, adding quickly that he had not had much luck. “I’m told that my accent isn’t, quote, ‘bueno’ enough.”
The three-minute appearance, while greeted warmly by the studio audience, did not appear poised to enter the zeitgeist as previous mayors have managed while performing on the show.
Edward I. Koch, who hosted an episode in spring 1983 (and who would later rack up several more cameos), courted controversy when he called President Ronald Reagan a “wacko” in his opening monologue. Rudolph W. Giuliani dressed as a zaftig Italian grandmother in a skit when he hosted in 1997, and he introduced the program’s first episode after the Sept. 11 attacks, granting permission to the show’s executive producer, Lorne Michaels, to be funny again. (“Why start now?” Mayor Giuliani quipped.)
Mr. Bloomberg’s appearance was more akin to that of David N. Dinkins, whose lone “S.N.L.” cameo was a brief segment during the show’s 1993 Mother’s Day special, when Mr. Dinkins dressed as a genie and lip-synced lyrics from an “Aladdin” song.
Backstage on Saturday at the “Saturday Night Live” studios in Manhattan, Mr. Bloomberg, a hands-on executive, was not inclined to leave the creative process to others. The mayor offered several last-minute dialogue changes to the show’s writing staff and improvised some lines in an early rehearsal, according to a spokesman.
At least one of the mayor’s ad-libs made its way into the televised script.
When Mr. Meyers, in the broadcast, asked Mr. Bloomberg if he would still consider a future run for president, the mayor offered a smile.
“Seth, I don’t know what the future holds,” Mr. Bloomberg replied, before artfully landing a punch line he had suggested just a few hours earlier. “President? Pope? Naked cowboy?”
The audience roared. At a dress rehearsal, Mr. Fallon joined in, telling Mr. Bloomberg: “You’d make a great naked cowboy.” (That line was cut from the broadcast version.)
The mayor’s office said producers at “Saturday Night Live” had frequently asked Mr. Bloomberg — a regular guest on the talk-show couches of David Letterman and Mr. Fallon — if he would like to appear on the show, but the discussions never progressed until recently. A mayoral spokesman did not respond to a question about whether Mr. Bloomberg’s frequent weekend travels had made “S.N.L.” a tough sell.
At a dress rehearsal on Saturday evening, the audience cheered loudly at Mr. Bloomberg’s entrance, although the mayor did not quite garner the excitement prompted by some of the evening’s other guest stars, including Madonna and Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees.
The most frenzied roar came for Paul McCartney, who sang a duet with Mr. Fallon in the opening minutes of the show. But Mr. Bloomberg, indirectly, received something of a shout-out from the puckish ex-Beatle.
Asked by Mr. Fallon how he avoided traffic en route to the Rockefeller Center studio, Mr. McCartney paused.
“I took a Citi Bike,” Mr. McCartney explained, to much applause.
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