Maya Rudoloph and Garrett Morris are both former cast members from Saturday Night Live‘s honored past.
The two of them had similar experiences, as well as very different experiences, since there were nearly 25 years separating their respective stints on the show.
Maya Rudolph and Garrett Morris sat down to talk about their lives as SNL cast members and what life was like behind the curtain as the 40th anniversary of the show approached.
One of the things both Maya Rudolph and Garrett Morris experienced was the intense writing process that goes into producing sketches that make the world laugh every Saturday night.
However, the times were different when Garrett Morris was on the show from 1975-1980 than they were when Maya Rudolph was a cast member from 2000-2014.
Maya Rudolph said of her first go at the writing side of the show, “I got there on a writing night on a Tuesday and I said, ‘What do we do all night?’ And Chris Parnell said, ‘We write.’ And I said, ‘Till when?’ He goes, ‘Seven, eight in the morning.'”
She added, “And I remember all the doors closed and I was like, ‘What the f— do I do?’ And you just do it. It was terrifying.”
Maya Rudolph admitted that there isn’t a right way to do it, you just sink or swim.
She said, “There really is no specific system that’s taught. And if you can swim, you survive. But if you can’t, you’re in trouble. And Lorne [Michaels] has always said he hires people based on, if you run into that person at four o’clock in the morning are you gonna want to talk to them or not?”
Garrett Morris already had a ton of experience writing before he was hired for the show. He said, “I was ‘discovered’ after being in New York 17 years, right? I’d already written a couple plays, been in about 30 off-Broadway and Broadway shows. I was 38.”
However, the late night writing memories weren’t that different than Maya Rudolph’s.
Morris added, “I remember that Chevy [Chase] used to write until four, on a napkin or something like that.”
Do you think you could write sketches for SNL?
