5 things we learned about ‘SNL’ and its crazy election season from the Hollywood Reporter
Saturday Night Live
has re-entered the cultural conversation in a big way during its 42nd season. With Hollywood stars like Alec Baldwin and Melissa McCarthy showing up repeatedly to play President Donald Trump and White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer (respectively), and cast members like Kate McKinnon playing White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway and Attorney General Jeff Sessions (yes, both of them), the show’s politics-heavy approach has given SNL its best ratings since 1993, according to Variety.
To find out what it’s been like to work on the long-running variety show during a season unlike any other, the Hollywood Reporter spoke to 20 people directly involved in the show, including cast members, writers, producers, and SNL creator/executive producer Lorne Michaels. Here are five of the most interesting tidbits from the in-depth profile.
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1. A member of Trump’s cabinet reportedly thinks Baldwin’s impersonation of the president is really good.
Baldwin said in the interview that he’s had people approach him on the street to thank him for his presidential impression, while others (Trump supporters, Baldwin suspects) have showered him with expletives. Baldwin also claimed a member of Trump’s cabinet complimented his impression at a New York City restaurant.
“I’m not going to name names, but a cabinet member walked up to me at a restaurant in Manhattan — Manhattan, that’s a hint — and he goes, ‘I gotta tell you something. This thing you’re doing is good, it’s really good,'” Baldwin said. “He goes, ‘I’ll get fired if anybody quoted me saying this, but that’s exactly what he’s like when you do it.'”
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2. Dave Chapelle improvised his post-election monologue.
Neal Brennan, who co-created Chappelle’s Show with the comedian and served as a guest writer for the episode, said that Chappelle wasn’t happy with his monologue after performing it in dress rehearsal. When the time came to step onstage, Chappelle promised Michaels “two minutes of magical TV.”
“Chris Rock and Lorne and I are all watching underneath the bleachers, and Dave is such a good orator that he spun that yarn about Frederick Douglass and Bradley Cooper,” Brennan said, referring to the final minutes of Chappelle’s monologue. [Chappelle compared Douglass being the first black man to visit the White House under President Abraham Lincoln to President Barack Obama hosting a party more than 150 years later at which every attendee was black — except for Cooper.] “He’d never said any of it before in his life. It was off-the-cuff. He’s just playing a different game than the rest of us.”
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3. One of the times McCarthy returned to play Spicer, it was because the writers thought Spicer might be fired.
SNL co-head writer Kent Sublette said that after Spicer’s comments about the Holocaust, the SNL team rushed to find a way for McCarthy to reprise the role once more before she came back to host the show in May.
“After Spicer said that thing about the Holocaust, there was speculation that he’d be gone by the end of the week,” Sublette said. “Melissa was slated to host in May, but we were like, ‘Let’s get Spicer back one more time in case he does get fired or in case there’s a writers strike.'”
4. When Trump hosted the show, he didn’t consult advisers before approving sketch ideas.
Despite the fact that it was a full year before Trump would become president, co-head writer Bryan Tucker said it was still surprising that Trump didn’t bring an entourage of advisers to Studio 8H to offer input on what sketch ideas he would or would not do.
“When we bring a sketch to Hillary Clinton or even John McCain, there are two or three other people there to talk it through and give us thoughts about what might be acceptable,” Tucker said. “[Trump] came alone with his BlackBerry. He made all the decisions on what he wanted to do and what he didn’t. He was just going with his gut the whole week. Turns out, that’s also how he governs.”
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5. The day after the election, Michaels gave a pep talk to boost the morale of his forlorn staff.
Cast member Colin Jost said that Nov. 9, 2016 was “extremely said and very disorienting,” and that “no one was feeling very funny.” Cast member Cecily Strong said that she and cast member Kate McKinnon “hugged and sobbed” in the hallway. The negative energy led Michaels to give a reportedly unprecedented speech.
“Before the read-through [on Wednesday afternoon], Lorne gave us this pep talk: ‘The world’s not going to end tomorrow,'” Sublette said. “As crazy as things are, he’s right. ‘Half the country voted for Trump, and our show’s for those people as well. It’s not just for people who didn’t want him to be president.’ Lorne also reminded us that ‘we’re professionals and we have to do our job, and that’s what we’re going to do.'”
