Live From New York - James H. Miller [274]
MAYA RUDOLPH:
I have a hard time sleeping. I drive myself crazy with worry and I make myself sick with fear from everything in the world. There are certain weeks where I’m frustrated here and certain weeks that I’m mad at myself because I didn’t write what I should have written or I’ve shot myself in the foot. I think if anything, my biggest thing here and my hardest job to get through is just my own personal fear of not being funny and trying to learn how to write. I never really aspired to be a writer, and here I am writing every week on my favorite show in the world. I make myself sick with worry every week about my writing.
But if I start to take any of this stuff personally or worry about how this is working or how much I’m on, I’m going to drive myself nuts. I have to be here far too many years of my life for that. I don’t want to be unhappy here.
I’m such a people pleaser that I’m sure I wouldn’t let anybody see all the things that are going on in my brain.
I say pretty nasty things in private. I’m a very foul-mouthed young lady. I have a really wonderfully dirty sense of humor. I love really dirty things. You can ask anyone and they’ll tell you the same. I get pissed off, but I’m such a Chatty Kathy that everyone ends up hearing about it. I get mad when I’m not in the show or when I fuck up. If I fuck up, I shake and I get embarrassed. For whatever reason, I get nervous here but I don’t get that nervous. I get nervous like if my dad’s here or if there’s a guy I think is cute and is watching the show. I don’t get nervous because it’s Saturday Night Live. I get excited because it’s Saturday Night Live.
AMY POEHLER:
I’m much too egotistical and insular about my own performance to be able to look at the show as a whole. I do know that everybody who writes and performs here I find really, really talented. I’ve learned that this show belongs to everybody, and everybody feels very entitled to talk about when they don’t like it and when they do. And everybody likes different things.
Whether the show is doing well or not is the last thing I try to think of, because it just gets too much in your head when you’re trying to write. I’ve never watched old repeats of SNL because I can’t bear it. I mean reruns of older seasons of stuff, because if the scene’s funny I’m jealous that I didn’t think of it. It’s too intimidating. I just can’t compare myself. I love it so much I can’t even watch it.
May 18, 2002, marked the final show of Saturday Night Live’s twenty-seventh season. Winona Ryder was the host, using SNL as her “coming out” after being largely reclusive following an arrest for shoplifting. She had been a good soldier throughout the week of rehearsals; she didn’t throw any fits, stage any walkouts, or complain about the sketches. If it weren’t for some whispers amongst the staff that she had set her sights on Jimmy Fallon, her hosting week would have been almost boring.
Overshadowing Ryder’s appearance was the fact that this was to be the last show for Will Ferrell as a cast member. After seven years, he had decided it was time to move on, despite the fact that Michaels and the rest of the producers and cast wanted him to stay. Much of the show was being designed as a final tribute to Will and his many characters — Alex Trebek, the professor in the “Lovers” sketch, even Neil Diamond.
An hour before dress rehearsal, Neil Diamond called on Michaels’s line, and when the assistant said there was a guy on the phone claiming to be Neil Diamond, those sitting around shouted in unison, “Hang up,” believing it to be a crank call. Minutes later, when coproducer Marci Klein entered, it turned out she’d been trying to reach him, and it had been the real Neil returning her call. Klein called Diamond back at his hotel and talked him into making an appearance on the show while Will was doing his Diamond parody. To listen to her pitch was