All that Oscar talk may have helped him somehow? They can’t all be winners, but I’d imagine if you took a job like that too seriously and agonized over the perfect sketch everytime, SNL wouldn’t be able to air every week.
Hey, people laughed didn’t they?
The joke is pretty much just that Jeremy Irons really had an Oscar on his mind, and well… he did end up taking home his Best Actor Oscar for Reversal of Fortune just days after delivering that monologue.