He’d been studying this for less than a week, but he broke that down pretty fucking fast. I was amazed, especially considering the chaos with hair and makeup and costuming that was going on backstage in the seconds before I was to join him on the main stage during his monologue:
“Where’s the brush?”
“Nobody said anything to me about a brush.”
“Did you get me a nose?”
“Didn’t have time. Just found out.”
“So did I. Did you get the elevated shoes?”
“Why do you need elevated shoes?”
“Because he’s a fucking foot taller than me.”
“Okay, tell Tom to hurry.”
“How’s the wig?”
“I didn’t get a chance to fit it.”
“Why?”
“Nobody told me.”
“Fuck.”
“Here are the shoes.”
“Thanks. Is that the wig?”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t look like an onion loaf.”
“What?”
“His hair is supposed to look like a fucking onion loaf! It’s fucking Donald Trump. Jesus.”
“Oh, no.”
“What?”
“Oh, fucking no!”
“What?”
“These shoes don’t fit.”
“Ten seconds. You’ll have to go on without them.”
“But he’s a fucking foot taller than me!”
“Jesus, calm down.”
“I can’t. I’m doing Donald Trump to Donald Trump, and he’s a fucking foot taller than me.”
“Deep breath. Two seconds.”
“I’ve got no fucking shoes on! No onion loaf!”
“You’re on!”
The bit worked terrifically well—Trump had me “fire” Jimmy Fallon’s wildly gesturing Jeff Zucker—but in our matching dark suits and purple ties, I ended up looking like a Mini-Me version of the dude instead of his double.
Shaquille O’Neal was a little different because he had someone with him who appeared to act as his adviser. I happened to walk by the music room and saw this giant man sitting on a tiny couch with a normal-sized man sitting next to him, while writers and music people pitched a song they wanted him to sing. Without a word, he looked at the guy next to him, who must have said or gestured his approval, and then he said, “Yeah, okay.”
Sometimes, when you’re that famous, you’ve got to have someone who can say, “You’re not going to look good if you do this.”
Of course, Shaquille O’Neal singing a lullaby while holding Will Ferrell like a baby was a smash hit. Also, he ate more in one sitting than a mere mortal could eat in a year. Nice guy, real soft-spoken.
When football stud Tom Brady hosted in 2005, Robert Smigel wrote a TV Funhouse sketch called, “Sexual Harassment and You.” The bit required Brady to walk through a warren of office cubicles to show how to “correctly” talk to women. In one scene, he walks through in a pair of tighty-whities and cups Amy Poehler’s breast. At read-through, someone had marked at the top of the script, “This one is for the costume shop.”
We also did a Dr. Phil sketch in which Tom played a husband who’s so clueless to his wife’s needs that Dr. Phil hauls off and slaps him. I was very proud of that because he demonstrated his athleticism by lurching his head with impeccable timing as I whizzed my hand past his face.
J. Lo was one of those hosts who doubled as the musical act. When she appeared in February 2001, I got to see her extraordinary magnetism up close. Just walking down the hall, she owned the place. I overheard some tech guys by the coffee urn say, “Animals probably look at her and think, Why don’t I get that?” She’s certainly an attractive woman, but this is Saturday Night Live. If you’re hot, we’ve seen you. J. Lo was different. Catherine Zeta Jones had an imperial kind of beauty—you’d want your queen to look like her—but J. Lo has the shit that people go to war for, and this was a full ten years before the country fell in love with her all over again when she cried for the contestants as a judge on American Idol.
There were men who seemed to have that effect on women too. I remember walking down Fiftieth Street with Scott Wolf, the young heartthrob from the hit drama Party of Five, and a convertible filled with attractive young women pulled up alongside us.
“Hey, Scott! Come with us!”
Is the balance of nature upset when something like that occurs? There’s no wooing, no cooing, no courting, no flirting, no getting to know you, no sizing each other up, no smelling each other’s cologne, just “Hey, Scott! Come with us!” What is that like?
Shortly before air on October 18, 2008, I stepped out of my dressing room and slammed into a wall of the tallest, largest badass Secret Service agents the U.S. government has ever assembled. Before I could ask what was going on, I saw Sarah Palin walking past the hair and makeup department, past Jason Sudeikis’s dressing room, straight toward me. Wait, no, not toward me—toward the bathroom. Only the host and musical guest get a dressing room with its own bathroom. Other guests who make cameos, as Palin was to do that night, are consigned to public facilities.
Oh, no.
I drank tons of Diet Coke when I was working, so I used that bathroom a lot. The truth is, I’m pretty good about the bathroom, ladies. I lift the seat, and my aim is true. Most of the time.
I can’t let her go in there. What if I missed? I have to check! How do you say that to the Secret Service?
I could just picture it:
“Is there a problem here, son?”
“No, sir, but I need to get in there for a sec before she—”
“Stop right there!” Guns drawn.
“But, sir!”
“Don’t move!”
“But I sprinkle when I tinkle!”
I once saw James Gandolfini go in that bathroom and I thought, Eh, he’s okay. In fact, I was secretly charmed that Gandolfini would use the same facilities that I had been using that day.
But with Sarah Palin, I was a little alarmed. I felt she could have made a better choice at Rockefeller Center. I would have advised her to use the bathrooms down the center hall that leads to the stage doors and the theater. Those are very fine bathrooms, very well kept. I think that’s where most celebrity guest star people go to the bathroom. I wanted to say “Hillary doesn’t use that bathroom. Please let me try to discourage you. Hillary uses the other one.”
An hour later, someone asked me, “Would you like to say hello to Mrs. Palin?”
I walked down the hall to her dressing room. It was a peculiar moment. You know when your mouth gets ahead of your brain and a thought rolls off your tongue as your brain says, “Hang on a minute! I did not authorize that! Stop!” Well, when I was with her, I didn’t know what to say. “Hey, how’d you like the bathroom? Everything okay? Find everything in order?” Somehow I managed to keep that witty repartee inside, but I can’t remember what I actually said, because all I could think about was her using the toilet I peed in all day.
I’m not speaking for or against her politics, but she seemed a little bit like royalty in the degree of attention she commanded. The members of her security detail I spoke to said they’d never seen this kind of preparation for anybody. The NYPD was out in force. God knows what kind of sniper SWAT team was stationed on top of the building. I’ve never seen so many Secret Servicemen in my life. More than for John McCain, more than for Barack Obama, more than for Hillary Clinton, more than for Bob Dole, more than for anyone. When Sarah Palin came, we weren’t allowed to go into the studio to start work that Saturday morning until they’d searched all of our dressing rooms.
At the same time, Sarah Palin is exactly what she seems. She’s not putting on an act. That’s who she is. She’s incredibly charming, and she’s very attractive. If you meet her in person, and you claim not to like her after five minutes, I don’t believe you.
When Illinois senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama did a cameo in November 2007, someone had just discovered he was a distant relation
to Dick Cheney, so the writers came up with a terrific bit about it that he and I would do for “Update” in which I would play Cheney, and we’d chat about our family. On Saturday afternoon, we took it out on the floor for the run-through. On the floor, you can always improvise a line to see how far you can stretch. If the writer likes your ad-lib, he might include it in the final sketch.
When we did the Cheney/Obama bit, everybody in the studio laughed, but Obama decided he didn’t want to do it. He apologized, but it was killed before we got to dress. Instead, we did a cold open with Bill and Hillary Clinton hosting a Halloween costume party. I was Clinton, dressed as a character from the show The Pickup Artist, and Amy Poehler as Hillary was dressed as a bride. Horatio Sanz, as Governor Bill Richardson, sucks up to Hillary in a not-very-subtle attempt to win a spot on her ticket as vice president.
When he wanders away, Hillary says to Bill, “How come people are only nice to me when they want to be vice president, and they’re nice to you all the time?”
I reply, “People like me.”
A few months later, when Hillary was on the show, I wondered if she thought about that line. But then again, I’ve been to twenty-three shrinks, what do I fucking know?
In walks a guy wearing a Barack Obama mask. Amy/Hillary asks, “Who is that under there?”
He takes the mask off, and lo and behold, it’s the actual future president (although of course we didn’t know the future president part yet). The guy had so much charm and charisma, he might as well have been Jack Kennedy, and he was greeted with such loud applause and cheering from the studio audience that we had to pause before he could yell, “Live from New York!”
When people like Obama and Palin show up for a cameo like this, rather than hosting, they aren’t there the whole week. They’re too busy kissing hands and shaking babies—all that important stuff that constitutes running for national office. So they show up on Saturday. It gives you an idea what a quick study a presidential candidate in this country has to be. You’ve got to be able to think on your feet, absorb a ton of material really quickly. You can see why a guy like Bush, who’s not really interested in being a performer, can stumble around a bit out there, and get in trouble once in a while. But when Bush came and did the presidential special, he did some nice work.
Bob Dole had impeccable comic timing. He did a cameo right after he lost his bid to unseat Bill Clinton in 1996. He was in the cold open with Norm Macdonald, trying to console Norm since, because he’d lost, Norm’s impression of Dole wasn’t necessary anymore. Dole nailed his punch line: “You’re really doing an impression of Dan Aykroyd when he does an impression of me. You know it, I know it, and the American people know it.”
I remember thinking, How’s he so good at this?
When Arizona senator and war hero John McCain hosted in 2002, he easily mastered his monologue. We did a sketch of “Meet the Press” on that episode where he played himself, and I played the late great Tim Russert. I have to say, McCain knows how to wait for a laugh; he’s got great comic timing. He came back for a cameo on the last show before the 2008 election, in which he and his wife, Cindy, were in the cold open with Tina Fey as Sarah Palin. The three of them hosted a QVC “Washington Outsider Jewelry Extravaganza” to raise money for awareness of the campaign. They were fantastic. It had been years since I’d been onstage for the good-byes—in retrospect, it was an asshole thing to do, but I never really felt like a full cast member, so I usually just left when my last sketch was over—but I did it when McCain was on the show, out of respect for him.
When Hillary came on in the spring of 2008, there was a palpable buzz in the air about her. I’ve been around the most famous and powerful people on the planet, and some of them have a certain thing. When Hillary walked into SNL, she was a star. She walked down the center hall toward the studio twin doors with the magnetism of a president. Everyone was fascinated by her, whether they loved her or hated her. Young writers, young cast members, people who were planning on skewering her that night, were all like “Oh my God.” She looked like a head of state.
She did a bit with Amy that required her to absorb material in a really short amount of time, and it went extremely well.
She was also very friendly and forthcoming with the cast and crew, and lots of people were charmed by her. As for me, well, I think she may have been unhappy about that Halloween sketch I did with Obama. Or maybe it was my appearance at Bush’s first Correspondents’ Dinner in 2001, when I did a bit as Bill Clinton explaining to the men in the audience why he’d messed around with Monica Lewinsky: “You’ve met my wife?” Anyway, when the junior senator from New York passed me in the hallway that Saturday, she looked at me like I was a piece of furniture. I was upset that she seemed unhappy with me. You like to think the high and mighty are delighted by you too, but maybe the high and mighty don’t give a shit about you, you fake-nose-wearing fuck.
The following Monday, I suspected I would run into her again, because she was scheduled to appear at an event I had to do for Lorne at the Plaza, during which I was supposed to give a pair of shoes to Mayor Bloomberg. Hillary didn’t come in until I was leaving. I pictured her waiting backstage, saying, “Is that fucking asshole out of there yet?”
Back when she still liked me—she sent me an autographed photo thanking me for playing her husband after the first Correspondents’ Dinner I did—Hillary invited me to come perform at an event dressed up like Bill. Amy Poehler was going to join me and play Hillary. Amy and I wrote what I thought was a gorgeous piece based on the musical number “If I Loved You” from Carousel: “If I Did Run.” Amy sang the first verse, and I sang the second, and then we joined in together. Someone from Hillary’s campaign pooh-poohed it. Unfortunately, it was a Friday night at SNL, not exactly a good time to stretch out with your feelings and think about other things. We didn’t have time to come up with anything new. I’m pretty sure it was that Halloween sketch that ticked her off, but Amy and I were both honored that we’d been invited.
Having spent a fair amount of time studying these people, I had formed an idea of how the various politicians stacked up against one another.
The thing about Bush is, if you dropped him in New York City, and he didn’t have a famous dad and he didn’t have any money and he had no education, he would have an apartment in a month, although he’d have some bumps and bruises and scrapes.
Bill Clinton, in the same circumstance, would also have an apartment, but he would have a new wardrobe to go with it. Both were very canny, streetwise guys who knew how to navigate.
Obama would have the apartment, but he would also be teaching an advanced seminar in Eastern Lit at the graduate Department of Linguistics at Columbia.
Thanks to all the years my daughter has hung out backstage—she basically grew up at SNL—she pretty much thinks everyone famous will show up in her world sooner or later, because that’s what her life was like. Twenty new superstars a year over twelve years of her life—that’s a lot of celebrities. Obama had a private heart-to-heart with her and posed with her for a photo. I thought that was completely charming, and she wasn’t at all intimidated.
When I saw Kate Winslet backstage at the Letterman show, my daughter was very small. Kate walked right up to her and said, “What a beautiful baby.” She leaned down and gave her a little kiss, and then she picked her up, and my daughter tried to kiss her back. Kate said, “No, my darling, you must purse your lips. Purse your lips.”
A few years later, Kate hosted SNL, and I reminded her of the incident. My daughter was about six or seven, and Kate said, “Remember what I taught you?” My daughter said yes, and they reprised the exercise. It was easily the most elegant, sweet moment I ever saw.
Even when my daughter met the Olsen twins, she wasn’t that blown away. If you were on television, sooner or later you were going to show up in the room with her. That’s the way it was.
I used to get hideously jealous of anyone who got something I wanted and didn’t work for it. I pra
cticed for eighteen years to get to Saturday Night Live. All Paris Hilton had to do was make a home sex tape that was so grainy and dark, like it had been filmed with night vision, that you couldn’t tell whether she was blowing a guy or getting rescued from an Iraqi hospital.
(I thought it was interesting that relatives and loved ones of hers came to the show, all of them behaving as if they hadn’t seen her video. I don’t know how you have a family gathering when one of the people at the dinner table is famous for blowing a guy. What do you talk about?)
Like most people who get something without earning it, Paris didn’t appreciate the experience. On Tuesday night, she visited all the writers in their offices, moving down the hall one by one. It’s a tradition and an honor for a host to make those rounds, and they are happy to be there, jazzed to hear all the sketch ideas that are being written for them. I saw Paris come out of one writer’s office holding her little dog, turn to her assistant with a slightly puzzled expression, and whine, “How many more of these do we have to do?” She resented having to meet these Emmy Award–winning writers. What an awful experience that must have been for her.
And then on Friday night, she did the unthinkable. The story that was going around was that she had locked herself in her dressing room, holding everything up for an hour and a half. On Friday night at SNL, there’s no time to fuck around for even a minute. But Paris was offended to the marrow of her bones because one of the writers suggested that she do the cold open with Joey Buttafuoco, the man famous for banging an underage Amy Fisher, and then attempting to stand by his wife after young Amy shot her in the face. After his wife finally tossed him on his ass, Buttafuoco had cashed in on his celebrity from that scandal by fighting a female wrestler on Celebrity Boxing.
“How dare you compare me with someone like Joey Buttafuoco!” Paris complained with no irony whatsoever.
Lorne fixed the problem, Buttafuoco was dropped, and the show went on. But I’d never encountered anybody, no matter how big the star, who had the balls to say, “I won’t go on.” Luciano Pavarotti came and sang because he wanted to be on SNL. Hillary, Obama, Palin—none of them held up the show.
God, if You're Not Up There, I'm F*cked: Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night Live, and Other Mind-Altering Mayhem Page 15
