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By Root 1330 0

like really just a wonderful fucking thing for everybody. There were pressures and there were some people who didn’t succeed with the show as much as they would like and may have some feelings about that. But like this last anniversary show was a wonderful experience. Maybe it’s just from being older, but everybody sort of didn’t care. Like it didn’t matter whether you had become a $20 million a movie performer or you were Laraine. Everybody was sort of like, “We did this thing.” They might have felt differently ten years ago or something. But it was a great experience. The more people have experience with other things, the more they appreciate what we had.

Of course, I’m sure you’ve heard some very bitter things too.

ANDY BRECKMAN:

Downey hates the way that Lorne recently has had guest stars in as sort of stunts. He’d turn around and there’s Joe Pesci or Robert De Niro or Jack Nicholson. Who can we get, who’s in town, who can pump this up? My kid brother, David, eleven years younger, he wrote for one year on Saturday Night Live, back whenever the Pesci– De Niro thing was, and he was struggling. Because he writes kind of smart, writerly pieces, and they were just looking for stuff to feed characters. He was not getting material on that he could sell at all.

And the first sketch that he officially got on the show survived the cut between dress and air and was slated for the last slot of the show. And Lorne lately has been cutting sketches even during the show, so even being on the final rundown is a little tenuous. But he was officially on and he was thrilled, and it was his first sketch on — and then when Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro, in the middle of that show, made their surprise appearance, the recognition applause in the studio — I didn’t have a stopwatch, but it seemed to go on over sixty seconds, it seemed to never end, like a full minute or ninety seconds of recognition applause. And my brother was watching and knew that because of that, his sketch would be bumped. And that just killed him.

MAYA RUDOLPH:

I passed on my first audition because I’d gotten another job offer. But I didn’t really want it. This is all I ever really wanted to do. I waited my whole life to be on Saturday Night Live. And then when they said come and audition, I’d just been offered a job on a hospital drama called City of Angels, a new Steven Bochco series. So I passed on the audition and I was miserable for a month. I was shooting this drama during the week and doing comedy on Sundays. And Steve Higgins came to the theater and he said, “If you don’t get picked up for your show, would you be interested in coming back to New York?” And I said, “Yes, please.” I never wanted to make that mistake again. So I ended up meeting with Lorne. If interviews are based on how you think you did, I did horribly and should not have gotten the job. I was quite convinced he was not going to give me the job. I didn’t feel very secure in the meeting and I was terrified, and I think I ate a piece of popcorn and I was afraid I was going to choke. I just remember being quiet. I’m not a very loud comedian when I’m in one-on-one, and I remember walking back to my hotel thinking, “I will never enter that building again.” It was the worst interview of my life. I was an idiot. I was horrible and not convincing.

They brought me in at the end of the twenty-fifth season for the last three shows of that season. I don’t think a lot of people had much fair warning that I was coming, as far as what I’ve been told from the cast. I think I was sort of dropped on them a couple days before I came: “Oh, by the way, this new girl’s coming, Maya Rudolph.” And I think it definitely made a lot of the women feel, “What does this mean for us? Are we being replaced?” A lot of people were sort of like, “What the hell? We had no idea you were hiring a new cast member at the end of the season.”

And I think it made a lot of people feel worried or threatened that things were being shaken up here. That didn’t happen — but I was not well received by all.

It was like going to school and