The Best ‘Saturday Night Live’ Sketches, According to the People Who Made Them
Ahead of ‘SNL50,’ we asked Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers, Bill Hader, and more to tell us which of their sketches they hold closest to their heartsThe Best ‘Saturday Night Live’ Sketches, According to the People Who Made Them
Ahead of ‘SNL50,’ we asked Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers, Bill Hader, and more to tell us which of their sketches they hold closest to their hearts
What’s your favorite Saturday Night Live sketch? Whether it’s “Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood,” “Mary Katherine Gallagher,” or “More Cowbell,” there’s always one that hits the hardest. The people who've actually worked on the show have their favorites, too.
With the SNL50: The Anniversary Special coming up this Sunday night on NBC, it’s the perfect time to hear from cast members and writers past and present about their single favorite moment they were a part of at 30 Rock. What made it memorable, what made it surprising, and most importantly, what made it funny.
There’s no magic formula, but the most transcendent sketches—the ones we reference and quote, even years later—often share two traits. Just ask Seth Meyers, the show’s head writer and “Weekend Update” anchor for a decade. “A lot of great SNL sketches are both obvious and unexpected,” he says. “You have to combine the two to make it rise above what, you know, could be a very good sketch.”
But what Meyers is talking about doesn’t just happen by accident. Punching something up is a process. And that process is what I’m going to take you through, with the help of people who know how it works better than anyone else.
Seth Meyers on “Darrell’s House”
Airdate: May 4, 2013
When Zach Galifianakis hosted SNL for the third time, Seth Meyers thought of an idea that wasn’t exactly … obvious. It was a sketch broken into two parts. In the first half, Galifianakis plays an awkward public access show host giving postproduction notes to his producer during filming. The second part actually incorporates those changes. And also, Jon Hamm shows up.
Sometimes it’s challenging when you know you have a host who’s good, but you’re out of ideas. Because then it’s fully your fault.
I remember the first time Zach had hosted, he did a whole bit where he was just walking onto the set of Law & Order. He walked onto the set of The Today Show. He was already more than willing to take risks with the format of SNL.
I was messing around with the idea of Zach being a talk show host who was just giving notes about postproduction. He was on board really quickly. And obviously, when you watch the first half, that is a fine, albeit pretty undercooked, idea. So I had written that version of a draft, and I showed it to [writer] John Solomon. And I said, “Is there anything to this?” And John said, “Yeah, I don’t know. I just keep wanting to see what it looks like afterwards.” And I was like, Oh, yeah. And then I went back to my desk because I couldn’t quite wrap my head around how you would even do that.
And I remember Oz Rodriguez, who’s a really good director and did a lot of short-film work on the show over the years—Matt & Oz and then as Oz on his own—it was his job to make all the post edits. But we only had 15 minutes of real time to do it. So I spoke to him about the reality of whether or not you could pull that off, and he thought we could. The team, in that classic SNL way, was so excited by the challenge. Nobody ever said, “Well, you can’t do this. This is dumb.” So then the fun in writing it was putting in the fun jokes that would be rewarding for the audience to see, and how to say them in a way that would make it memorable enough to pay off 15 minutes later.
We had dress [rehearsal], and we all felt pretty good about it working. At dress, Oz was basically saying, “I think we could do it in this amount of time.” And he pulled it off. Oz finished the edit and rushed down, and we watched it together. It was very fun to watch a director pant in the way that the rest of us were always sort of panting. (I feel like I could go on and on about Jon and how game he is, but I think the nicest thing I could say about him was that very little explanation had to be given to Jon before he showed up to do this.)
Will Forte showed up with risk-taking implanted in his DNA. I needed to have a real base coat of competence before I had the balls to risk a sketch like this. And also, I think, to have Lorne [Michaels] put his confidence in me to execute it. Although, of course, the execution mostly was a technical side that I had nothing to do with.
I’ve never written anything with a better payoff. It was like a “ta-da!” when you didn’t realize you’d been watching a magic trick.
Amy Poehler on “I’m No Angel”
Airdate: October 18, 2008
In the fall of 2008, Amy Poehler was nine months pregnant. Her friend Emily Spivey, an SNL writer, was expecting, too. So, they joined forces and played that up on screen.
That song, “I’m No Angel,” was just kind of like an office bit that Emily Spivey and I would do. We would play it and just kind of laugh about it. It was just such a goofball song, but we also kind of loved it. We kind of love Gregg Allman. We’d always say, “God, we want to do a sketch about the song.”
There’s something about that sketch that I love so much because it was our senior year. It’s kind of like we had senioritis. We were both pregnant. We were both on our way out. We really didn’t give two Fs about a lot of stuff, in a good way.
I think it’s funny to do physical comedy with your own pregnant belly. My pregnancy was just all in my stomach, so it really looked fake. It looked like I had a giant beach ball under my shirt. It’s like wearing a giant sombrero in every scene—you kind of just have to address it. That sketch is a great example, I think, of when you start getting loose on the show and just try stupid stuff.
It’s just a woman who’s picking up guys at a bar—it’s kind of like a honky-tonk—but she just happens to be really, really ready to pop. Josh Brolin was the host, and he’s just like, all right. He’s really feeling me. He’s got an amazing mustache. I can imagine that one of the reasons it got on is because Josh Brolin probably fought for it or liked it. There’s a great moment where Josh Brolin says, “When are you due?” I say, “Yesterday.” It’s like what Yellowstone wishes it was, that sketch.
I don’t know if anyone’s ever done, on the show anyway, actual physical comedy with their own pregnant belly. We had breakaway bottles, and I just kept walking past people’s tables and knocking things over. It’s really fun when you’re pregnant. You’re so used to taking up a certain amount of space, and then you just really do bump into things a lot.
The scene ends with a twist: It’s actually a commercial for a new fragrance “from the old, weird Gregg Allman.” Allman’s played by Will Forte.
Let’s be honest, Forte has a lot of Allman in him. Emily remembers Lorne being freaked out that Forte was sniffing me as Gregg Allman. I have no memory of that.
That was the last show I did before I gave birth. I didn’t know it at the time. I thought I’d have one more in me because I stupidly thought my child would work with my SNL schedule rather than the other way around. But that was the show that Sarah Palin came on, and I did the Sarah Palin rap. That was a really fun show for me.
I know that there was an ambulance standing by in case I went into labor. I’ve insisted on that on every project since.
Mikey Day on “Beavis and Butt-Head”
Airdate: April 13, 2024
Writing partners Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell have watched a lot of live TV. And as they know from first-hand experience, live TV can be unpredictable. Like, for example, when someone sitting in the crowd is ridiculous enough to become a distraction. Day and Seidell thought it’d be funny to stick someone cartoonish in the background of an otherwise serious event. Literally. And that’s how Beavis and Butt-Head showed up at a town hall about the rise of artificial intelligence.
It was always just based on the idea of a live broadcast and someone looking distracting in the back. At one point, we talked about the Rugrats, Chuckie and Tommy. At one point, He-Man, like with that hair. But we just thought, Beavis and Butt-Head, they are so insane looking. As soon as you start to bring real-life dimension to them, you’re really like, “Wow.” They are weird-looking humans.
We loved the idea, but one time it got cut at dress and one time it got cut because there wasn’t enough room for the set or something, so we felt like it was one of those doomed ones. And then we’re like, “If we can’t get it on with Ryan Gosling, then it’s doomed and we can’t do it. We’ll never be able to do it.” When Gosling came on, he just completely got it. That’s what’s cool about Ryan. He’s this beautiful movie star, but at the end of the day, he likes stupid stuff.
On Wednesday night after the sketches are picked, you visit with all the departments like hair, wardrobe, makeup. So to Louie Zakarian, who does all the makeup, we’re like, “How do we look like Beavis and Butt-Head?” Everyone’s so good at their jobs there. Louie’s just like, “I think we’ll give you a nose.” And then he made this lip prosthetic, which is the hero of that look.
At dress rehearsal, we were in the look, it just wasn’t as fully formed. And then I remember I wanted to get [town hall host] Heidi [Gardner] to laugh again. So before the sketch, I was in the shadows looking down so that Heidi didn’t get a look at me because I wanted the first time to be on camera. When Heidi turned around and [the camera’s] just on me, she was laughing so hard to the point where the sketch wasn’t continuing until she got it together. I’d never really had that experience.
I feel like you have moments there where you can feel like, “Oh, this is a core memory.” I definitely got this rush and this high from it. And then you’re chasing that. But you have to resign that moments like that are not going to come along that often. They’re the results of this odd chemistry between the right idea and the right person and the right host.
I saw Ryan as he was leaving and I was like, “Every time you come on the show, you change our lives.” The first time he hosted, Streeter and I wrote the “Close Encounter” sketch he’s in with Kate McKinnon, where they were abducted by aliens. I’m like, “You’re this magical prince who waltzes into our lives every couple years and fully changes them.” And so we had a moment.
And then he called me the next week and was like, “What do you think of going to the Fall Guy premiere dressed as Beavis and Butt-Head?” I was like, “That’s awesome.” I just had questions. I was like, “Are we going to be Beavis and Butt-Head and then you’re going to go change and I’m walking around as Butt-Head by myself? Because that’ll just look sad.” Like, Mikey Day attends Ryan Gosling’s premiere dressed like his character from that sketch two weeks ago. But we both went out and he quickly changed back, and then I just went back to New York. So it was really quick, but it was awesome. I remember being in the limo and we were about to get out and he goes, “We’re doing this. What have we done?”
It is crazy how on that show, things come together like that, and you can try and duplicate it but sometimes it’s this alchemy that just happens in the moment. That’s why it’s hard to top. I’m always like, “I peaked at ‘Beavis and Butt-Head.’” And that’s fine with me.
Rachel Dratch on “Debbie Downer”
First appearance: May 1, 2004
Rachel Dratch still remembers the lovely vacation she took to Costa Rica in the aughts. While eating breakfast at a communal table at her hotel one morning, she was having a conversation that was quite pleasant—until it wasn’t.
People were like, “Oh, where are you from?” And I said, “I’m from New York.” And someone at the table said, “Were you there for 9/11?” But it was like three years after 9/11. We’re in the middle of this beautiful place and it screeched everything to a halt. That moment just sort of stuck with me.
And then, about a week later, I just had this idea of this character that says bummer things and brings everyone down. I have a bit of that in me, especially about environmental things. I’m always suppressing when someone’s like, “Oh my gosh, it’s 70 degrees in December.” I want to be like, “That’s because of climate change.” But I don’t. But Debbie Downer does. All those thoughts you have that you don’t say, she does.
Then I approached [SNL writer] Paula Pell. We were trying to write it together off this character, and at first we set the scene in an office and we were having trouble getting the scene going. We realized we need to put it somewhere really happy so she’s more in contrast. So then we thought of Disney World.
While we were writing, someone would say a line and then we started just going, “wah-wah.” Just us doing that to each other. And then we were like, “Wait, why don’t we put the ‘wah-wahs’ in the scene with these trombone sounds?” So then we went to the music person for the read-through table, and we had the trombone sounds come in. And it was just so unexpected. Because you don’t often do actual sound effects at the read-through table. So then that stayed.
Even when it gets to dress rehearsal, you still don’t know if it’s going to go in. And I remember Jimmy [Fallon] and Horatio [Sanz] were laughing a lot, and I was thinking, “You guys, come on.” Because it’s so hard to get a character to hit there. But then on air, I just got the giggles. People say, “Why did you start laughing?” I don’t even know.
Not to get over-analytical, but I think as opposed to a regular scene where people break, it created this tension because you knew the camera was coming in on me every time, and I had to try to keep a straight face. The struggle was real. The one that killed me the most is when I knew I had to say, “It’s official. I can’t have children,” out of nowhere. I’m trying to rev up and not break and that one made me laugh the most.
It’s weird because now it’s 20 years old. A lot of people tell me, “Oh, that’s my mother, that’s my boss.” People know someone like this. And there are young people who think that was always a phrase. People think I wrote a sketch off this commonly used term. That's not true! The sketch came before the term.
Jay Pharoah on “My Girl”
Airdate: November 2, 2013
At SNL, Jay Pharoah was known for his uncanny impressions of celebrities such as Barack Obama, Denzel Washington, and Stephen A. Smith. But a few years into his time on the show, he wanted to prove that he could do more. In 2013, he’d just gone through a breakup with his girlfriend. Late one night, he and his friend Jarrod “J-Rod” Tanner were listening to the novelty song “The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?).” (Hey, it was 2013.) That sparked an idea.
He was like, “Dude, we should parody this song.” I was like, “What about this: What does my girl say?” He said, “That’s it.” At first when I wrote it, it was one-sided, and then we got in the writers’ room and they were like, “Well, we got to make a shift in it.”
The first draft was about a girl who was a total nag. In subsequent versions, Pharoah’s girl comes back with her own (very valid) complaints—and then dumps him.
Maybe a lot of people would have seen that coming, but it’s a good twist. It was something I focused on like, “Holy shit, it’s going to really pop at the end with that…”
It was fun pitching it to Kerry Washington because it was a clear-cut idea. She’s very smart. She saw the comedy in it, and she knew how to play it. It was an instant, “Oh, that’s going to be fun.” But she also helped me in the [writers’] room. She said, “I really want to do that sketch.” When the host says there’s a sketch that they really want to do, and everybody’s on board, it’s a home run. I had all the pressure of the world, and I had all the help in the world.
It was a real video. The people that played my family in it, they looked like they could have been related. I said, “Wow, they really do a good casting job.” I remember talking in between [takes] with her and Oz [Rodriguez] filming and us just catching chemistry. I remember not leaving that shoot until I think it was 4 or 5 a.m. on Saturday. It was cold as hell and my nipples were poking out of my shirt.
When it played, I remember hearing the reaction and I just got so excited. I said, “I’m going to keep my job this year.” It was a pivotal moment for me. And I remember I looked at Lorne’s face and Lorne just gave me the two hands like, “Yeah, it’s funny. Relax. It’s supposed to be like that.” It was cool. I would never take that for granted.
And I will tell you this, man, to this day, I’ve gotten projects through Kerry Washington because of that sketch. She always tells me, “I’ve done Scandal. I’ve done Django. I’ve done all of these projects, but when I go overseas and I go to China, Jay Pharoah, do you know what they tell me they saw? They tell me they saw, “What does my girl say?” And then every time she sees me, she’s just like, “Jay Pharaoh, who that bitch?” And I’m just like, “Man.”
Heidi Gardner on “The Last Dance: Extended Scene”
Airdate: May 15, 2021
A year after ESPN’s The Last Dance introduced us to Michael Jordan’s security guard, John Michael Wozniak—he’s the guy with spectacular curly hair who mockingly shrugs like MJ when he beats his boss at quarters—Heidi Gardner got an email from writer Streeter Seidell.
The subject line was just, “It’s a travesty you haven’t played this character yet.” On Sundays, you try not to even think about sketches, so I was like, “Oh my God, Streeter is thinking of me on a Sunday. This must be gold.”
I definitely expected to open the email and see a picture of a woman, and then I opened it. I was like, “Oh yeah, the security guard from The Last Dance documentary that came out nine months ago.” I definitely watched that. I loved that scene. I laughed at it. I did not think of myself, not for a second. One of the coolest things is that he saw me as that. He gave me this gift. Sometimes I try to just blindly believe if someone sees something in me that I don’t. I’m like, “Yeah, I should follow this lead,” especially when it’s someone as prolific as Streeter.
I remember writing him back and being like, “Yes, please, can we?” We just always had it in our back pocket. It was a few months until Keegan-Michael Key came to host, so we were like, “Oh, I think this could line up.”
It was really neat, because I did the wardrobe fitting for it, and it’s like, “OK, I’m in this oversized suit and I’m kind of feeling more like a dude.” And then you go into makeup and get in the wig and they do the mustache and beard and the glasses. But then Louie, the head of makeup and effects, comes out with these sheets of—the best way I can describe it is it looked like Saran wrap with curly leg hair on it. Because at one point [I’m] in these tighty-whities, and they’re like, “Well, you have to have super hairy legs.” Suddenly I’m just like a guy. It was really cool, that process.
I was in my own little mid-’90s nostalgic wonderland. My mom is from Chicago. We don’t have a basketball team in Kansas City, so I got to adopt the best team. I loved being a ’90s Bulls fan, and that was connected to my mom. I got the chance to recreate this one room at the United Center in the early ’90s, where all of the amazing background actors were in throwback Bulls warm-ups. Kenan [Thompson] was Charles Barkley in a throwback Suns warm-up.
I feel like I was going through something at that time, because you always hold a sketch really close. You want your sketch to work, obviously, and it doesn’t always. I might have been on a run where I’d had a lot of things cut and was feeling a bit down. I was really excited about that one, but it just felt like a big leap for it to work. I remember Kenan telling me he loved it so much when we were filming it, and he’s been at the show so long. He’s like, “Man,” he’s like, “Last night was magic.”
But it’s a year after that documentary came out. It’s a niche reference. It’s just all of these things where I’m like, “I don’t know how this is going to play.”
When I knew it was airing, I covered my ears in my dressing room. I was like, “This is too close. If I get my heart broken, I can’t watch it happen.” I opened up one ear to hear if it was done. I was like, “OK it’s done. I’ll change for my next thing.” Bowen [Yang] and Ego [Nwodim] came rushing into my dressing room and were like, “Yes!”
People were so complimentary. [Michael] Che texted me right after like, “That was laugh out loud.” The type of specific compliments sometimes that you get where you’re like, “Oh, wait, this really landed.” That night, Adam Sandler texted me how much he loved it, like, “That shit had me laughing so hard.” And I was just like, “Wow.”
Bill Hader on “Vincent Price’s Halloween Special”
Airdate: October 25, 2008
Even as a kid in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Bill Hader was fascinated by Vincent Price. He loved the mid-century horror star’s movies, especially The Tingler. For that one, the director William Castle invented an in-theater gimmick called “Percepto!” “They literally would shock people in their seats,” Hader says. Eventually Hader grew up, but he never grew out of his obsession. His version of Price ping-ponged back and forth from theatrical creep to 1950s variety show host.
My first season, [writer] Charlie Grandy, I just remember him saying to Matt Murray, who was a writer on the show, “Hey, you should do Vincent Price, but not for Halloween. Why don’t you do it for Thanksgiving?” And we went, “Oh, that’s a good idea.”
And I did my impression, and my impression was essentially totally ripping off Dana Gould’s impression. I could do his impression of Vincent Price. I mean, I will forever be indebted to Dana.
I did my first show [as Vincent] with Eva Longoria. As you watch it, I trip over my second line. I’m just so nervous. And then Matt and I wrote a couple more. We did a St. Patrick’s Day one with Matt Dillon. And then a couple years later, Jon Hamm was hosting, and John Mulaney—it was his first season on the show—said, “Why don’t we bring back Vincent Price?” It was the first thing I ever wrote with John Mulaney. I remember I was thinking, “What would Vincent Price say to Liberace here?” And Mulaney said, “Oh, he could say, ‘Save your sassy asides for your windowless bars!’” And I went, “Jesus Christ. That is a great line.”
At dress rehearsal, Hamm played Dean Martin. But Lorne Michaels didn’t think the portrayal quite worked. So before the show, he called Hader into his office.
Lorne said, “Could you teach him how to do James Mason?” And we go live in, like, 15 minutes. Jon Hamm, to his credit, didn’t bat an eye. He went, “Oh, OK.” And I go, “You know James Mason’s like …” And he goes, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what James is like.” I was like, “OK. Cool.” When you’re seeing it, that’s the first time I’m hearing his James Mason.
I’m just trying to keep calm the whole time. And then for some reason, I just remember the audience was so hot. [Hamm] was so funny and comfortable. Every sketch we did, people went nuts. I think up until that point, I was learning so much about SNL. The one thing that I was trying really hard to do was to relax, which was very hard for me. I had a hard time just being myself on the show. I would watch people like Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph, or Kenan Thompson especially, where I was just like, “How do I get to that?” The way they performed it at the table read was how they performed it on the show.
And I felt like that was the first sketch where I took my time. I didn’t rush anything. I projected. A lot of times I would get real quiet because I would get nervous. And I didn’t cover my face with my hands, and I was able to do it. And I remember at the after-party, Lorne Michaels went, “That’s the best you’ve ever been on the show.”
It really meant a lot. That was the first sketch where I went, “OK, I’ve attained that.” When I fall off the horse and go back to being a nervous wreck, I know I’m capable of that.
Ego Nwodim on “Mid-Day News”
Airdate: October 5, 2019
Watching crime stories on the local news has always made Ego Nwodim anxious. Before starting at SNL, Nwodim thought of turning that experience into a sketch. The idea? Black anchors celebrating the fact that an alleged killer on the loose is not Black.
Whatever sort of crime is happening—there’s a suspect on the loose, and we’re trying to find the suspect—I’m always like, “My goodness, what a terrible crime!” And I go, “Please don’t let it be a Black person.” Because we don’t need that kind of press. I don’t want that kind of press for us.
And so that’s a feeling I have. I like when my sketches come from that place. I think the other stuff is super fun, too, but I love when it comes from like, “You know what’s strange?” Or, “You know this feeling I have that I’ve never really articulated to anyone?” I want to make a sketch out of that.
I brought it to one of our producers, Erin Doyle, because I really think there’s something to this. And I’m surprised nothing of this sort has really been done, or at least to my knowledge hasn’t. I asked Erin, I was like, “Do you have any advice for me on how I can make it really work?” And she’s like, “You know who might be helpful? Che.”
And so I took it to Che and he’s so effing brilliant. And he was like, “Yeah, I think it needs to turn into a bit of a game.” I was like, “OK, I love that.” He honestly unlocked the sketch for me with that note.
What the sketch becomes is a pair of Black local news anchors, played by Nwodim and Thompson, celebrating whenever a perpetrator isn’t Black. Their colleagues, a pair of white news anchors played by host Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Alex Moffat, eventually get so annoyed that they get in on the speculation.
Before the show, Nwodim was worried that the audience wouldn’t get the joke. When the first perp mentioned is a white armed robbery suspect, Thompson says, “Woo!” and Nwodim says, “Love it!” Sure enough, it got a big laugh.
Kenan is an angel. I would call him a sensei, as well. He’s been there for so long. He performs with such an ease, but then knows how to make a funny thing even funnier.
I remember just feeling like, “Are they going to laugh at this first turn? Are they going to go with us?” The relief I felt when they laughed at that first turn, I won’t forget.
Vanessa Bayer on “Jacob the Bar Mitzvah Boy”
First appearance: January 15, 2011
Ever since Vanessa Bayer’s been in comedy, she’s tapped into the awkward sweetness of childhood. When she was a stand-up in Chicago, one of her characters was a boy at his bar mitzvah. (Growing up in Cleveland, she had a bat mitzvah herself.) When Bayer got to SNL, Simon Rich wrote a sketch for her where she played a bar mitzvah boy. He had no idea she’d ever played a similar character.
I was always so grateful to him for doing that because, you know, Andy Samberg was still in the cast. He was like, “You just looked more like a little bar mitzvah boy.”
I got to do it [once in a sketch] and then Lorne liked it. It was maybe Seth’s idea to do it as an “Update” character. That was the case for so many of my characters on the show. I would try them in sketches. They would sort of work, but not 100 percent. Like the weather woman, Dawn Lazarus.
I obviously loved the sketches, but “Weekend Update” was so fun for me because you just got to go on and do this weird character and the hosts were so good at interviewing you, but also so good at playing along. Most of the characters that I got to do, I would always sort of be poking fun at the host. It was so fun doing the bar mitzvah boy with Seth, because me as Jacob, I really looked up to Seth, but I couldn’t be nice to him. You know, just like how little boys are. I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t cool.
I used to write that with Marika Sawyer and Zach Kanin and the three of us were so on the same page with it that one day we were all like, “Who would play Ethan, Jacob’s older brother?” And without speaking, we all came up with Jesse Eisenberg.
I feel so one with that awkward sort of kid who just loves to be on stage. He has to not give too much respect to the person he’s talking to because that would make him lose respect. I think that Jacob was just obsessed with Seth Meyers and loved getting to hang with his buddy. He probably told people that Seth Meyers is his best friend. The last update I got to do with Seth, I remember I sort of pretended to cry, but I really was sad that Seth was leaving.
I just went to my cousin’s son’s bar mitzvah. I hadn’t been to a bar mitzvah for years. He had such a long Torah portion, I couldn’t believe it. And he was so perfect. He did this thing at the end of his speech, and I said to my cousin who was sitting next to me, “Here comes the joke.” And he did a joke.
I wish I could remember what the joke was. But I saw it coming. He did that bar mitzvah thing where you could tell he was excited. After all of this kind of serious stuff, now it’s time for him to show that he’s also actually very funny.
James Austin Johnson on “Family Meeting”
Airdate: March 4, 2023
For many years, James Austin Johnson has been obsessed with “On My Own.” The Patti LaBelle–Michael McDonald duet from 1986 is beguiling, if you ask him, because it feels more like a romantic drama than a breakup song. On a whim, he pitched a sketch based on the music video, in which the two singers—played by Johnson and Ego Nwodim—are an older couple who sink an ungodly amount of money into a video that explains to their children why they’ve decided to open up their marriage.
Usually, in pop songs, it’s very primal, simplistic—enough for any age to understand what’s going on. We used to make love and now we don’t. That’s as complex as a human relationship gets in a song. And in “On My Own,” it’s “Now we’re up to talking divorce and we weren’t even married.” It’s a novel. It’s really getting into the nitty-gritty of what these people mean to each other. And I don’t know, I just thought that that was fertile ground.
It started from that. I was intent on replicating the look of the video, and I really wanted a pre-tape. And it’s a big ask of production when you’re a younger cast member to say, “Give me a pre-tape.” It’s basically like saying, “Give me $5 million.” It’s probably not $5 million, but I’m sure it’s a big ask. The way that we’d originally written it was Ego and I sitting our adult children down, and we’re going to pop in a video we made.
We brought it to the table with Pedro Pascal. And I played the guitar solo live. It’s a rinky-dink little guitar solo. But it was very important to me that I show musically that I give a shit about this genre. And we also just thought it’d be funny if I played it. It went off. Nobody was expecting the musical genre to be what it was. I don’t think people were expecting me to be Michael McDonald at all. Ego is a really beautiful singer, too. And, in fact, it went over so well that we got called to [producer] Steve Higgins’s office and he was like, “You’re going to have to figure out a way to do it live.”
And so then we rewrote it as a living room piece, which was great, because it gave Ego and I a chance to show our live music vibe. But it got cut live on Pedro Pascal’s episode. It was up against “Lisa from Temecula,” and [Ego] basically had her choice of which one to do. So I’m getting my Michael McDonald beard off and watching “Lisa from Temecula,” just like an atom bomb, just annihilate. And it’s pretty rare that I’m ever truly bummed that a sketch of mine was cut. That night, I couldn’t have just been more happy for Ego. And in the back of my mind I was like, “Alright, I got to find a new Sucre Wolodarsky.”
When Travis Kelce came up, we did it at the table again. We must’ve been off for vacation, because people forgot about it. I went harder on every aspect.
It just became a little bit of a zanier sketch. And so, watching it back, it’s just so weird with so many little goofy bits that I’m amazed that we got it off. I don’t know that this is my tippy-top thing that everyone associates me with. I think it came and went for maybe some people, but it’s really dear to my heart. I love Ego and I love getting to work with her.
And I love, for lack of a better term, yacht rock. Donald Fagen would not self-apply that term, so I’ll say, I love yacht rock, plus the music of Donald Fagen. And I really love that I pulled off a guitar solo, however lame it was. I had to do that on live TV. And, yeah, that’s a John Mayer Silver Sky PRS. He and I were just talking about something else on Instagram one time and he was like, “Here, you should try out one of my new signature guitars.” And he just sent it over. I didn’t think he was serious. This guitar just showed up at my office.
Tracy Morgan on “Woodrow” and “Astronaut Jones”
Airdate: May 13, 2000 and February 2, 2002
Tracy Morgan likes to sing. In fact, a minute into our interview, he broke into song. “Little TV sets, goin’ off inside my ear, firecracker beer,” he croons, perfectly on key, off the top of his head. “Chased a demon’s lightning, music hits your eye, up and down the sidewalk, take a doo-doo pie.”
He didn’t just make up that tune. It’s from one of his favorite sketches: “Woodrow,” about a man who lives in a sewer who befriends—and gently serenades—Britney Spears. Blissfully, it doesn’t make a ton of sense.
That’s a vanguard. That’s one of those sketches, you want to put that on after the “Update” because it keeps the crowd going and it keeps us in the game.
Ghostface did a sketch on one of his albums and the guy’s name was Woodrow and I just copied it off that. Woodrow still is my boy.
Britney had a ball. It was different. She said it was different. It was different than anything she had ever done in her life.
Morgan’s other favorite character made his debut the second time Spears hosted. His name is Astronaut Jones, and he’s a cross between an old-school crooner and the hero of a sci-fi Blaxploitation film. After singing his theme song, Astronaut Jones usually meets a beautiful woman on a faraway planet—then hits on her. That’s it.
And then it was over. That’s why I loved it. It was short and sweet. Why don’t you get out of that green dress and show me your fat green ass. Oh man, that shit cracked people up. I said I wanted to do a Frank Sinatra character with the smoking jacket, the cigarette. We put it all together and that’s what came.
Back in the days, it used to be cocaine and marijuana. Us, we were just tired. We were just sleepy, delirious.
Please Don’t Destroy on “Hard Seltzer”
Airdate: October 9, 2021
Martin Herlihy, Ben Marshall, and John Higgins, the three legs of comedy tripod Please Don’t Destroy, started at SNL in 2021, just as hard seltzer’s popularity was starting to peak. Almost every beverage company seemed to be making one. The logical next step was non-beverage companies making hard seltzer. And thus the trio’s first digital short, which revolved around JCPenney Hard Seltzer, was born.
Martin Herlihy: The words “JCPenney Hard Seltzer” came before any sort of observation about people making hard seltzer.
Ben Marshall: I feel like the hard seltzer element is maybe 40 percent of what’s funny about it. It’s also [about] just like when you have your friend who’s clearly doing something weird, but refusing to acknowledge it.
Herlihy: It was funny that Corona had a hard seltzer. Like, “What’s the appeal of this?”
John Higgins: You guys already do your drink and it’s good.
Marshall: We thought about making it an actual commercial parody at certain points. I remember being like, “Is it weird to do a fake product thing and not like a traditional SNL commercial parody?”
Higgins: I remember when somebody said “Jiffy Lube Hard Seltzer.” I was like, “That’s the idea that anybody at Jiffy Lube would be excited to pitch.” Let’s break into alcoholic beverages and hard seltzer. That was when it clicked for me. And I remember seeing the can when they brought it in and being like, “This is really funny.”
Marshall: It very much did not belong with the rest of the show. Just three guys you’ve never seen before in a small box, doing a very internet-y video. Paul Briganti, who had been working there for four or five years, directed it. He would slowly start inviting people one by one to watch it and be like, “Is this anything? Is this anything?” And then he was showing producers. And then I think they had to ask Lorne. Like, “They shot this thing. Do you think they could air it at dress?” And he was like, “Yeah, sure.” The first time he had seen or heard anything about it was under the bleachers in front of the live audience at 8 o’clock that night for dress.
Herlihy: We had never even written a sketch before, so that was the first time we were under the bleachers with him for anything.
Higgins: The whole time your eye is constantly watching him, but also the screen to see if it’s working. When we got the first laugh, I remember feeling more elation than I’ve ever felt in my entire life. God, dude.
Robert Smigel on “Schmitts Gay”
Airdate: December 14, 1991
There were so many commercials at that time that were populated by bros. And it was just such a stupid, embarrassing way to sell beer. It just cracked me up.
“Schmitts Gay” was a practical joke. It was just one simple adjustment, and then just a beautifully executed practical joke on sexist beer commercials. The entire target was sexist beer commercials, the bro mentality that was encouraged and sought out by advertisers at the time, and the underlying homophobia that you could presume existed in said community.
The entire joke was on the bro community, represented by Adam and Chris. That’s [head writer] Jim Downey. I thank him for that, because I wrote it for Kevin [Nealon] and Dana [Carvey]. They loved the idea. The writers loved it. I was like, “OK, this is maybe going to be the first commercial of the year.” But Dana and Kevin were not going to be coming into New York for the beginning of the season, and Downey was the one who said, “Let’s just go with Chris and Adam.” And that was a very unusual choice to make for the first commercial parody of the season, to use young cast members and feature them. But he was like, “You know they’re the best people for it conceptually.”
Jim Signorelli was the main director at SNL, and he doesn’t get a lot of credit. The production value of all those commercial parodies was brilliant. I grew up watching SNL from the very beginning, and I remember—and people don’t talk about this—the thing that people talked about the most at the very beginning was the commercial parodies. They got so much attention. You just hadn’t seen anything like that.
I can’t remember what Jim Signorelli’s conflict was, but he wasn’t able to direct “Schmitts Gay,” and he handed it off to this Australian director named Peter Corbett. Years later, he told me it was the biggest regret of his whole career. It was a very fun shoot, partly because there was so little dialogue, so there’s very little stress in terms of getting the line right and getting the performance right.
Farley had, at least, done “Chippendales” by then, and everybody knew how explosively funny Farley was, and Adam was more sneaky funny. I even remember Adam expressing a little bit of nervousness on the set, like, “Oh, fucking Farley’s so funny, Bob. Farley’s so fucking funny. I don’t know. I don’t know.” And [I said], “You’re perfect for this. It’s going to be great.” And, of course, he was.
They were totally game. It was just a lot of shots of good-looking guys in Speedos, just having a great time. It was just festive. And then I remember Peter Corbett saying, “What about a conga line? Let’s do a conga line.” And I was like, “Is that going to look too gay?” The whole point was I didn’t want it to be stereotyping gay behavior. And he’s like, “That’s not a gay thing, a conga line. It’s just people having fun.”
It actually worked beautifully, because the genius editor had the conga line kick in right with David Lee Roth’s vocals. The original music was a combination of songs, but the main one is Van Halen’s “Beautiful Girls.” [Editor’s note: The original songs have since been stripped out of all rebroadcasts due to licensing issues.] The fact that people mostly don’t see the sketch with the original Van Halen music, it’s not a real-life tragedy, but it’s a comedy tragedy.
I have a reputation, or did, maybe still do, for being a perfectionist, and not being shy about wanting to get things right. And I remember screening this thing for the first time and I don’t remember if I had a note. I could not believe how perfectly put together it was. I love that the gay people in the commercial were not caricatures at all. They were just a bunch of gorgeous physical specimens, just like the women that are objectified in the beer commercials at the time.
There was that explosion, seeing the guys rise out of the swimming pool, and the reaction of Adam and Chris, looking exactly like a bro beer commercial, and then it just built, and built, and built. I picked Phil to do [the voice-over], because he just had a great announcer voice. That was always going to be Phil. And Farley’s flipping of the glasses is one of maybe the most famous Farley memes that exists, which is saying something.
It killed harder than anything I’d ever written up to that point, because everybody got the joke immediately. It was an era where gay humor was all over the place, and a lot of it now would be considered offensive. It was readily accepted back then, and some of it was under the guise of gay empowerment, but it was still ultimately, “Ha ha, isn’t it ridiculous that they’re gay?”
There was out-and-out, real gay mockery going on that was broadly accepted, that nowadays people would just shudder at. So what I loved about this commercial was that it was a commercial about being gay that did not make fun of being gay at all. There are so many sketches that I like for different reasons that I got to work on. Some, I would say are funnier, but that one had a gigantic impact.
Interviews have been edited and condensed.
