Bauer Griffin

Kristin Wiig’s recurring character Gilly might not seemed filled with holiday cheer, yet NBC is turning to her to host a “Saturday Night Live” Christmas special.

“SNL Presents: A Very Gilly Christmas” will air Dec. 17 at 8 p.m. The two-hour special, the first for “SNL” since 2002, will be led by Wiig’s Gilly, an ever-smiling Annie-lookalike who delights in violent mischief.

The special will feature new sketches with Gilly and highlights of classic holiday “SNL” sketches.

Wiig, roundly considered a standout performer on the NBC sketch comedy show, has built Gilly into a popular character. In a phone interview Monday, she said part of the fun of Gilly hosting is in her slim vocabulary, which consists mainly of the simple catch-phrase “Sorry.”

“That can be a tough one to work around,” Wiig said. “There’s going to be no long monologue. Maybe her five-word vocabulary will stretch to 10 or 11.”

A Gilly sketch is a very structured thing. It’s always set in a classroom where an uncertain teacher (Will Forte) questions his students (Kenan Thompson, Bobby Moynihan) on the source of some trouble making.

Wiig and Paula Pell, a writer on the show, came up with the sketch while writing something else, but the idea continued to stick.

“We just kept doing the smile and we did it for a couple weeks,” said Wiig. “We were just like, `Let’s write it.’ Maybe she’s this bad kid. We just started saying `Sorry,’ and it came organically from there.”

Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin will also make guest appearances on the special to help introduce clips they’ve appeared in as hosts, including Baldwin in “NPR’s Delicious Dish and the Schweddy Balls” and Martin in “A Holiday Wish.”

If pressed for a holiday favorite, Wiig cites John Malkovich’s maniacal reading of “`Twas the Night Before Christmas” last year.

“Since `SNL’ has been on for so long, it’s 35 years of at least two or three shows a year kind of based on Christmas stuff,” said Wiig. “There’s a lot of good material there.”

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Guess who posted this picture of herself today on Twitter? Answer after the jump! (more…)

TMZ reports:

Tiger Woods‘ mother-in-law is the woman who was taken to the hospital after the 911 call.

Officials from Health Central Hospital confirm Barbro Holmberg, Elin Nordegren’s mom, was rushed to the hospital from Tiger Woods’ home early this morning after complaining of stomach pains.

She is still in the hospital and listed in stable condition.

According to a rep for the hospital, Barbro is suffering from stomach pains … but they’re not sure what’s causing her discomfort. We do know Barbro is in stable condition … she’s undergoing tests right now.

TMZ

Tim Burton and actor Johnny Depp will team for a feature film version of the classic 1960s soap opera “Dark Shadows.”

The film will shoot in the fall, with Depp set to play the vampire Barnabas Collins, according to producer Graham King.

“We’re actually going to shoot that film next September/October with Tim Burton and Johnny,” King confirmed in an interview Friday in Los Angeles.

To guarantee a fall release, King is already prepping production with screenwriters.

“We’ve been working on the script a lot, even though he’s working on ‘Alice,’” King said. “We’ve been given a script. John August wrote the first screenplay. We’re making some changes, but the film’s going to be in production …”

From 1966 to 1971, “Dark Shadows” was a daytime gothic soap opera on ABC, featuring Jonathan Frid as Collins. NBC attempted a prime-time series reboot in 1991 that stared Ben Cross.

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Fame

Uma Thurman and her fiance, multimillionaire Arpad Busson, have called it quits, Usmagazine.com has learned.

A source close to the couple confirms they split almost two months ago. “Uma and Arki are friends,” the insider tells Us.

The couple announced their engagement last June after Busson gave Thurman an eight-carat diamond surrounded by 20 smaller stones.

Thurman, 39, and Busson, 46, were rumored to be wedding this past April, but those reports proved to be false. Thurman — who was previously wed to Ethan Hawke (with whom she has two kids) and Gary Oldman — has kept quiet on her relationship with Busson. (She began seeing him after splitting from Andre Balazs.)

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