If You Ask Me - Betty White [5]
All these years later, seemingly out of left field, in January 2010 there was a campaign on Facebook called “Betty White to Host SNL (Please),” started by a young man named David Matthews. By March, apparently almost half a million people had voted! And that’s when Jeff Witjas came to me with the hosting offer from SNL producer Lorne Michaels.
My reservations hadn’t changed a whit, but Jeff, who is not only a dear friend but has judgment far better than my own, would not take no for an answer. He insisted I had to do it. Over my strong (and desperate) objections, off we went to New York.
With the great ladies of Saturday Night Live.
NBCU PHOTO BANK
It was a terrifying proposition from the word “go,” but Lorne Michaels brought in the wonderful Tina Fey, Rachel Dratch, Ana Gasteyer, Maya Rudolph, Molly Shannon, and Amy Poehler (at the time, as pregnant as you can get) for the show, and they could not have been more supportive or more fun to work with. Ditto Lorne Michaels.
At the start of the rehearsal week, there are maybe forty or more sketches in the mix. These gradually narrow down to the five or six that make the cut by show-time on Saturday.
Normally, I memorize my lines. But with forty-plus sketches to weed out, that was impossible, and I was told we’d be using cue cards (anathema to me). That only added to the panic.
In fact, I think that scared me more about SNL than anything else, because I don’t use cue cards and I don’t use teleprompters. (Maybe for a commercial, which is a whole two pages long. Then the teleprompter is wonderful, because you look right into the lens.) But cue cards I hate, because it usually means your eye switches as you look from the camera lens to the card, lens to the card.
More scenes from Saturday Night Live.
Note the costume changes!
NBCU PHOTO BANK
So when it came to Saturday Night Live, I thought, How am I going to do that?
Well, they have this wonderful card man who knew my reservations. He stood a little above and behind her with the cards, and said, “Keep your eyes on me and the cards. Don’t look at Tina Fey.”
I’m thinking, How can you play a scene with Tina Fey and not look at Tina Fey?
“Don’t look at Tina and your eyes won’t move and you’ll be fine. And she’s doing the same thing,” he said. “Trust me.” I did, and it made all the difference.
If you watch the show, you’ll see that even some of the most accomplished actors around have that eye switch that is just so distracting. And these are stellar actors!
But the cue cards were just one part of the elaborate production that is SNL.
The week before, you fly into New York and go to the studio, and you sit around the table with all the cast and read forty-one sketches. You’ve not seen a script—this is your first look at the material. Everybody reads their parts, and as you go through them, some are naturally weeded out because they’re just not working. Then Lorne Michaels does his edit and weeds more out. Maybe twenty make the blocking stage.
More scenes from Saturday Night Live.
Note the costume changes!
NBCU PHOTO BANK
I was so nervous, but Lorne brought Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and all those wonderful gals to read with me, and they couldn’t have been more supportive. Soon, of course, we began having fun. (At the time, Amy was so pregnant she could hardly fit in the sketch. She has since had a beautiful baby boy. Now when I see her I say, “Have you lost weight?”)
As the week progresses, so does the weeding. By the day of the show, it has been whittled down to five or six sketches!
That day, you run through the show two times—in full costume. But it’s more than a dress rehearsal, it’s the real show, twice.
The challenge for me, besides the cue cards, involved the complete costume changes for each sketch, which must be done in one minute, thirty seconds. Saturday Night Live, indeed!