“I wanna look like Carrie at the end of this thing,” director Mike Diva recalled the “Wicked” star saying on set.

Ariana Grande asked to be drenched in ‘as much blood as possible’ in ultra-violent* Home Alone *sketch on SNL

"I wanna look like Carrie at the end of this thing," director Mike Diva recalled the "Wicked" star saying on set.

By Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel is a news writer at **. He began writing for EW in 2022.

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January 10, 2026 12:00 p.m. ET

Ariana Grande on 'Saturday Night Live' on Dec. 20, 2025. Credit:

Caro Scarimbolo/NBC

- *SNL* film unit director Mike Diva said that Ariana Grande insisted on maximizing the blood in the show's *Home Alone* parody sketch.

- "Ariana was like, 'I want as much blood as possible. I wanna look like Carrie at the end of this thing,'" he recalled.

- Colin Jost added, "She was really into being sprayed with blood."

The *SNL* creative team is pulling back the curtain on the show's gruesome *Home Alone *parody sketch.

Mike Diva, the film unit director for *Saturday Night Live*, appeared alongside cast members Ashley Padilla, Colin Jost, and Mikey Day to discuss the making of the bloody pre-recorded Christmas segment, which cast host Ariana Grande as Macaulay Culkin's Kevin McAllister, Padilla as Catherine O'Hara's Kate McAllister, Jost as Devin Ratray's Buzz, and Bowen Yang as Kieran Culkin's Fuller.

"Ariana was like, 'I want as much blood as possible. I wanna look like Carrie at the end of this thing,'" Diva recalled, in reference to the blood-soaked protagonist from Stephen King's *Carrie*.

Ariana Grande in Los Angeles on Jan. 9, 2026.

JC Olivera/Variety via Getty

"She was really into being sprayed with blood," Jost added.

The sketch saw the McAllisters arrive back at their Illinois home on Christmas morning in a remarkably accurate recreation of *Home Alone*'s finale — until everything goes off the rails when family members meet their gory ends after setting off Kevin's leftover booby traps from his battle with the Wet Bandits.

"We wanted to have a mix of the real booby traps from *Home Alone*, and then we were under the assumption that Kevin McAllister had set up other perhaps even more violent traps that we never got to see," Jost explained. "And now, we do."

Ariana Grande, Ashley Padilla, and Colin Jost on 'Saturday Night Live' on Dec. 20, 2025.

Caro Scarimbolo/NBC

Jost donned a goofy hairpiece to play Kevin's empty-headed older brother. "This actually looks like me in eighth grade," he said.

Diva said that Jost's ridiculous getup made it tough to take him seriously on set. "It's wild to work with him or look at him when he's dressed like that," the director said. "It makes work impossible. I'm about to be bullied by this dude!"

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The director also highlighted the joy of filming Yang getting his arm chopped off by a swinging chainsaw. "It takes a village to make Bowen's arm fly off and spray blood everywhere," Diva said. "At this point, we know that this is Bowen's last episode, and it is a beautiful thing that his last shot on a film unit is him getting his arm ripped off and spraying blood everywhere. Brought a tear to my eye."

Elsewhere in the video, Padilla expressed her admiration for O'Hara's maternal performance in the original *Home Alone*. "I just love Catherine O'Hara so much," the comedian said. "And she plays it so earnestly. This made me want to be in a Christmas movie. This is my audition."

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Watch the full "Behind the Sketch" segment above.**

Original Article on Source

Source: “EW SNL”