Famous hosts, musical guests and “Saturday Night Live” alumni turned out in full force for Sunday’s “SNL50: The Anniversary Special” tribute.
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00:00Can you please tell me everything about this CULPS reunion?
00:03How did that come together and what was the hardest song to learn?
00:07Oh, well, so it came together because for hilarious reasons, I don't know,
00:13the producers felt that somehow the CULPS would fit in with Arcade Fire and Jack White and Lauryn Hill.
00:20And so they asked us, I don't know, maybe a week ago, and National Treasure Paula Pell,
00:24the writer with whom Will and I wrote the sketch,
00:27and I got together and started noodling around about what they would be doing.
00:31We had this very funny, sorry, not really answering your question,
00:34but we kept laughing about how excited the actual CULPS would have been to be at Radio City.
00:39Will and I had this moment, we got that standing ovation at the end,
00:42where we were so happy on behalf of the characters.
00:46Because they would have been so sort of confused and excited.
00:50And it's all, you know, Kendrick was like, we went back and forth,
00:54like obviously it's Song of the Year, such an iconic song, the feud is so well documented.
01:00And it's also super challenging to learn how to do it very, very quickly,
01:04because we were, the transitions are always very hilariously clunky,
01:07where you're going from like, do that to me one more time, into Britney Spears, into Doji,
01:12and you know, it's not the most mathematically logical puzzle.
01:17So it's usually about finding your way in and out of the different songs.
01:20I mean, I was impressed that you could, you know, memorize the melodies of all those songs.
01:25Like, how long did it take you guys to put that together?
01:27Fast. It's always fast. It's always murderously fast.
01:30Luckily, yeah, we had James, the keyboard player from The Roots,
01:34and we just kind of drilled it in our dressing room and prayed.
01:37What are you looking forward to most tonight?
01:40The reunion is really, the older I get, the power of being a part of a living, breathing organism of a show,
01:45as opposed to a reunion show that's about a sitcom that was long ago.
01:48It's not a nostalgia play as much as it's a nostalgia play in combination with real, live culture.
01:56So for me, what's always so powerful about being a part of this pantheon of people
02:02that I still can't believe I'm a part of,
02:04is that you connect with all the different generations with a very similar language.
02:10So like, meeting all the new kids is really fun.
02:13Like, I hung out with the younger cast this week and, you know, hanging out with the Titans like Bill Murray.
02:19I mean, it's incredible, the shorthand, because it's the weirdest show on television.
02:24It's a very mutant set of skills that it takes to do it and do it well,
02:28and we share an unbelievable bond.
02:30And of course, that all starts with Lorne.
02:32So the beauty, sort of, of the shared admiration for him as well.
02:36Is there a piece of advice or maybe a note that you got from Lorne
02:39that you took throughout the rest of your career?
02:41I mean, he has really great show business.
02:45He understands show business very, very well.
02:47He has so many pieces of advice about, you know, the degree to which you have to take yourself seriously.
02:52But he also has some just basics, like be on time.
02:57Because round one, people think that's really cool.
03:02But round two, they start to get annoyed.
03:04And by round three, they're like, yeah, I'm not going to call her.
03:06She's always late.
03:07So he's very staged that way and investing in kind of your – investing in the truth of your own success.
03:14I think he's very, very knowledgeable about that stuff.
03:16Is there a sketch from your time on the show that you're still mad that it didn't make it to air?
03:20I'm going to say people always ask that question because there are so many sour grapes about the show.
03:24No.
03:25I don't know if it was just my era or not.
03:27Almost to the sketch, if something I wrote was funny enough to succeed at the table,
03:32it eventually made it to air.
03:33Maybe not that week.
03:35There may have been like an inside baseball admiration for the sketch.
03:40It might have come back later or whatever.
03:42I mean, NPR didn't air the first time it went to the table.
03:44We didn't even – it wasn't even produced.
03:46So – and now it's, you know, sweaty balls years and years later.
03:49So you – there was a commitment to good material.
03:54And if you produced good material, it generally made it.