I had dreams of conehead aliens when I was little. Before ‘Saturday Night Live’ did it. And then they came out with them, and I went on to be a glorified extra in the movie. When everyone else was laughing, I was scared.
On ‘Saturday Night Live,’ I never really wrote. You know, I would just – I would let the writers cast me into the show. So my strength – and I put all my energies into performance. I just couldn’t deal with the rejection, you know, getting your sketches cut, and it was hard for me.
It’s hard to complain when you say, ‘We’re gonna go to the clip where Helen Hunt and Will Ferrell are on ‘Saturday Night Live’ making fun of your song.’
As a kid I would watch ‘SCTV,’ ‘Saturday Night Live,’ ‘Monty Python’ and ‘The Kids in the Hall,’ and be amazed that these guys got to be different people every week. It spoke to the acting side in me.
The first glimpse I had of what Mario Batali’s friends had described to me as the ‘myth of Mario’ was on a cold Saturday night in January 2002, when I invited him to a birthday dinner.
I started performing non-professionally at birthday parties and family gatherings doing ‘Saturday Night Live’ impressions at four. Then I started for real at seven.
I did a number of local children’s theater plays growing up, but in 5th grade, I had some good times on stage making people laugh as a troll in ‘The Hobbit.’ That solidified my dream to be on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ which was hugely influential for me growing up.
I did the same thing as every Irish person who comes to New York. I arrived on a Wednesday, and by Saturday night, I was pulling pints at a pub in the Bronx.
If I knew anything about what people wanted and was popular, I’d still be writing for ‘Saturday Night Live’. I can only write what I want, and hopefully people will like it.
Nihilism in American comedy came along way before ‘The Simpsons.’ There was a fairly nihilistic point of view to ‘Saturday Night Live,’ for instance, back in the beginning, and a lot of really dark comedy had a really anti-sentimental take on life.
One week before my 17th birthday, I had a blind date with June Rose, a television actress on network soap operas, a model, and a regular on the popular Dick Clark’s Saturday night ‘American Bandstand’ show from New York. We were married five years later, one week after my graduation from Columbia.
‘Saturday Night Live’ will always be this amazing, powerful behemoth, but it’s also not the only thing happening in comedy anymore.
I grew up watching ‘Saturday Night Live.’
In ‘Mother’s Day,’ which is directed by legendary director Garry Marshall, I play a mother figure to the character played by Jason Sudeikis from ‘Saturday Night Live.’ He’s a widower, and I’m a mother who’s helping him to get over the loss of his wife.
