yes please(29)



Tina wrote a sketch where Chris Kattan and I played a white trash couple. It was very physical and I blacked out during a show when I was flipped upside down into a Dumpster. I woke up to Kattan standing over me and yelling. John Goodman was the host that week and is probably still my favorite, because he was nice to me when no one knew my name.

Once, after a long after-party, I was outside smoking with “Weekend Update” writer and future Parks and Recreation creator Mike Schur. Seth Meyers was also there, as well as many other men whose opinion I cared about. Host Ashton Kutcher walked out of the party and headed to his limousine. He casually said good-bye to me and I loudly and sincerely shouted like a crazy fan, “Love you, Ashton. You’re the best!!” It was very uncool. I was much too loud.

When Sir Ian McKellen hosted, he greeted us every day by booming out in his perfect voice, “Good morning, actors!” Colin Farrell was super hungover and super nice. Hugh Jackman was incredibly kind and sent everyone a case of Foster’s beer. Jessica Simpson was the prettiest host I had ever seen without makeup. Bernie Mac was the sweetest and kindest.

Matthew McConaughey wore a sarong in Lorne’s office, I danced at a club with Christina Aguilera, and Antonio Banderas smelled the best of any host.

I made a drink for James Gandolfini to settle his nerves before an “Update” piece he was doing. Once I asked Paul Giamatti during the show if he was having fun, and he smiled and said, “This is a f*cking nightmare!”

When Ashlee Simpson’s song screwed up, Dratch, Maya, and I were dressed in Halloween costumes for Parnell’s “Merv the Perv” sketch. We screamed and ran into Tom Broecker’s wardrobe department and hid under a table. Maya was dressed as a pregnant woman in a catsuit. I was Uma Thurman from Kill Bill. Dratch was Raggedy Ann. I remember us huddling together buzzing about the excitement of that weird live moment and then someone saying, “At least 60 Minutes is here.” For those who don’t remember, 60 Minutes was doing a profile on Lorne and happened to be there. Jackpot, Lesley Stahl!

Maya, Queen Latifah, and I were in a sketch where we had to sing a few songs as backup singers. Five seconds before we went live our stage manager, Gena, told us there was a problem with the track and we had to sing without music. We looked at each other wide-eyed and excited. When that sketch was over Latifah said, “That was crazy!” and we high-fived.

I sat in on Prince’s sound check. He was the musical guest and Steve Martin was the host. He walked over to me after he was done. My musician friend and lifelong Prince fan Amy Miles burst into tears. I turned to Prince and awkwardly asked him, “How was your summer?”

When U2 performed, Bono came over to hug me. My whole body blushed and I almost died from excitement and fear. Years later I paid him back by making out with him during a bit at the Golden Globes, thus completing a circle and allowing myself to effectively time-travel.

Speaking of time travel, I did a sketch with Jon Bon Jovi where I was a fourteen-year-old version of myself and he stepped out of a poster. The set was designed like my actual bedroom as a child, and Spivey and I had a long discussion about what brand of hair spray should be on the dresser. I think White Rain won. Jon Bon Jovi went into his own archives and got out the actual outfit he had worn twenty years before during the Slippery When Wet Tour. It still fit. Jon Bon keeps it tight.

I wrote that scene and most of my favorite scenes with Emily Spivey. Spivey is an insanely talented writer and actor from the Groundlings via North Carolina. She has a sharp tongue and gifted sense of character, and we would huddle together on Tuesday writing nights and try to do a “jam out,” which basically meant write something fast and fun. Out of that came Kaitlin, the hyperactive girl with a heart of gold. Kaitlin had boundless optimism, and she was a tribute to all latchkey kids who had to amuse themselves. It was also an homage to a Gilda Radner sketch called “The Judy Miller Show.” Spivey and I would spend hours talking about the genius of Gilda, or Jan Hooks, or Phil Hartman. We were also obsessed with the song “I’m No Angel” by Gregg Allman for some reason. We spent our whole tenure at SNL trying to get that song into a sketch. It ended up being the soundtrack to a scene where the super-pregnant me hits on Josh Brolin in a honky-tonk bar. Spivey was also pregnant at the time. It might have been the only time two pregnant women wrote a scene about a pregnant woman on SNL.



Courtesy of Broadway Video Enterprises and NBC Studios, LLC

Spivey and I wrote a sketch based on a real moment we had with the handsome and talented Justin Timberlake. He was hosting and came into the office one writing night. We both got very flummoxed, and it caused us to write a scene where I was attempting to give him notes backstage during a show. I was dressed as a leprechaun with a giant orange wig. I ended up getting tongue-tied and eventually just started humping on him. Justin had a lovely Southern woman who was his ex-teacher and “handler” at the time. She did not think it was a good idea for him to be shirtless during this sketch. I point to these boundaries as one reason why Justin has kept his shit together.

I once wrote a sketch where Steve Martin and I were two drunk people applying for a bank loan. It didn’t make air, but he still asks me about it sometimes, which is better.

You could spend the whole night working on a sketch and arrive the next morning to see that it was not in the read-through packet. Spivey and I wrote a sketch once about two dumb girls in a car shouting out the window at an eighteen-wheeler semi. The girls kept telling the driver to “honk it!!” Shoemaker called us the next morning to tell us the sketch wasn’t going to be read because there was no way to get a semi into Studio 8H. I’m sure he pulled it because he was trying to save us from embarrassment.

Amy Poehler's Books