This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio. Not long ago, there used to be two types of comedians, comedians and female comedians. Today there are so many women making us laugh that the qualifier has been rendered obsolete. Saturday Night Live deserves a lot of the credit for this development. The show has introduced us to Gilda Radner, Jan Hooks, Maya Rudolph, Tina Fey,
and Kristin wigg to name just a few. But there's been another woman at SNL, a woman who's been quietly working day after day for seventeen years, often without sleeping, to usher in.
This reality seventeen years, I've been there yet.
Paula Pell was working at a Florida theme park when she got her dream job as a writer at Saturday Night Live. Because the show has such a wide comedic range, it's the perfect challenge for Paula. You've got the hard hitting news parodies, and then on the other end, you.
Know, it's got fart jokes. It's got everything in it of the low parts of comedy. Mostly me being responsible for Thailand ALBM of Alec Baldwin taking a shit in a bed while he's sleeping.
Yeah, Helen albm At least it is a gentle sleep bait into your system that allows deep, restless sleep from up to ten hours, so deep it turns off your brains need to control the bodily functions most likely to wake you.
Rachel was like, did you just shit yourself?
I've slept like a baby.
Done.
You tell me, you tell you tell me, you tell me, you tell me.
In her memoir Bossy Pants, Tina Fay writes that her proudest moment as head writer at SNL was fighting for one of Pell's sketches introducing co Text. Classic Classic co Text is a commercial for the feminine protection of Yesteryear, featuring the sexy women proudly encumbered with bulky pads connected to belts peeking out of their clothes. I always know it's sad.
You can't beat the original.
Room girls, old school Paula pel In person is genuine, charming and easy, the kind of person you might actually talk to if you sat next to her on a plane, which, for those of you not in the industry, is not a description of the typical comedy writer.
I was always a bit of a class clown. I was a good Catholic girl. So I always wanted to be I never wanted to get in trouble, but I really pushed the envelope because I would be funny in class and i'd do things like one of my teachers. I would do a bit where I would go buy him and drag my hand along the chalk line, you know, the chalk shelf, and then I'd come over and i'd say, you know, mister Grocer, just a really great teacher, and I'd pat him on the back and i'd leave like
a handprint. He'd let me make him a little bit the full for a moment, and then he'd do you know, he looked like Roberry and all in the family at the big bushy mustache in the lawn there he paid it along. He just kind of looked a camera three, you know, non existent, and the audience would you know, the audience the class would crack up. Or i'd pass notes and say when I sneeze, because I have a really good fake sneeze. And I would say when I sneeze, everybody fall off their chairs.
And you know, I'd.
Always be doing something. But I grew up with an extremely funny dad and my mom is what to do. He worked for ILLINOI Bell. We grew up in Illinois and then moved to Orlando when I was a teenager. But my entire childhood, my grandpa was a watchmaker for West Clock's, So my dad always learned that from my grandpa. And then when he came to Florida, he worked for AT and T for many years, and then when he retired, he became a teacher of watch repair, watch making, all all of it.
So how does the guy who works for the phone company and how does he and he becomes a watch tinkerer? How was the funny in his life which get home?
He's just ungodly witty. He's he's really uh.
Never wanted to be in the business andself or did he express probably did.
But you know, I look at all the people in my family and all the relatives of different generations, and they all had their thing. You know, my mom has a beautiful singing voice. They all had something that they wanted to do. But the way they grew up was you just you know, you have kids early, and you you kind of figure out what you need to do to pay for that, and and so they you know, a lot of times didn't have the luxury that kids
have now. Even though it's hard to get a job, to say, you know, oh I'm doing this.
We'll get wrong with you that you didn't sign on to that program. What was wrong with you? Well, I they wouldn't just do what you were supposed to do.
They knew that I was pretty hopeless. I mean at my confirmation where you get the Holy Spirit. I came down the stairs at my party and had torn like eighty holes in my panteos and said I had the Holy Spirit and just would do things like that all the time.
You know, And this was before I drank or smoked anything.
Yeah, I was always a total hand. But my dad really taught me that he's the of like. I will tell you that. One of the hardest times I laughed at him is my mom and I were watching die Hard on television. My dad's cutting the yard, and he's outside cutting the yard. He's got his little jeen shorts on and his tank top, and he keeps coming in and walking by and kind of half listening. He's a really good, quiet half listener. But then he'll do something
based on what he's been listening to. I, you know, was listening to my mom, and the terrorist had the long blonde hair, you know, the big like kind of Nordic guy at the.
Beginning, Yeah, the ballet dancer.
Yeah.
And my mom says, you know, I don't know, but I don't like long hair, but that is pretty foxy, and she's like commenting on him. So we're laughing about it and everything. And then I'm not kidding. Like an hour later, my dad just walked through. He had gone in my room and gotten a wig that I had of all my shit in my room, put a long wig on with just his grass cutting stuff, and just walk through. He didn't stop, he didn't do a bit, He just walked through.
They also knew that rule like that you keep the ball in the air and play along. They were good, Yes, without the training, they were good improv people. Oh yeah, answers always yes.
King of like a prop he'll just And what I love about it is my parents are in their seventies now, and you know, and my mom was always like you'd say, you know, you go, oh god, Dad is so funny to you.
Thank god, thank god he's funny.
We had so much laughter in our house, you know, despite any any dysfunction. As any family, we always laugh.
Where did you go to college?
I went to college at the University of Tennessee. I first went to a local college in Orlando, a community college for two years.
So you moved to Florida.
I moved to Florida. My dad went down for at and T for that antitrust suit that they had.
When they broke up the thund.
Yeah, it was like late seventies. You know.
We had gone a few times down to Disney World with their little pop up camper, and like that was a vacation place.
That wasn't a place you moved.
And my parents sent us a little brought back a little polaroid of the house they bought, and it was, you know, about seventy thousand dollars. But it had this gigantic pool because in Orlando so many people have pool even with you know, inexpensive houses, and we just thought we won the lottery.
You know.
It was just insane. But we got there, and it was really hard the first year. I just never liked to be I mean, I think being new is a very important thing to do for growth. I think it really galvanizes a lot of stuff inside you of who you are and everything, and I'm glad in hindsight, but I used to just wake up in the morning and just cry, and you know, just because I had so much familiarity and comfort with all the kids that I
went to school with. It's just I was always quiet at first, you know, and then by my senior year, I got really involved in school and the girls, you know, would go because I remember when you'd come in, you know, you came in your junior year and I'd say, oh, really, really, because I came in my sophomore year and sat next to you for an entire class and you were, you know, a cold little ass wipe to me.
But you know that's right. Now we're friends.
And what was the difference for you in terms of the people if you can, if you can character from Illinois to Florida, I mean Florida.
Well, the biggest, I mean, one thing that really helped me was I was always I always sang. So I went in immediately into a concert choir, and so that was wonderful because then I had a social group pretty quickly. But the one thing about Florida that was so different that freaked me out was that, you know, I never thought I was growing up in Illinois in necessarily I mean a cold sort of atmosphere. It was emotionally warm.
I had great friends, you know, my family warm. But when I got to Florida, everybody hugged constantly.
Really, I was the other way.
Everyone was so affectionate in such a crazy way that I remember saying, it's I remember coming home and going stop cupping my nipples tenor I don't know you in the choir, no, but people would. I kept thinking it was our director's birthday or something. I was like, what the hell's going on in here? Everyone is hugging our teacher, hugging each other. I realized it was just that was
just the way everyone did, you know. And then my girl, my who eventually became my girlfriend of many years, was my best friend in high school and we were very huggy, and that all worked.
Out because I was the right person.
Not the teacher, not until after we graduated exactly.
Then then you went to the college down there.
I went to the college for two years down there, and I studied what well. Their theater department was amazing, their art department was incredible, and I was also an artist.
Seminole Community College but I mean the heads of those departments and the music department were so incredible that today they still are some of my favorite people that have Tennessee got time because my art professor, Grady Kimsey, who I'm a really good friend with still he had gone to ut years and years ago, just kept saying, you
got to go check out you tea. And then my girlfriend was going to North Carolina, so it kind of you know, I'd go up and visit, and I'd never been up in those mountains, and I just fell in love with those there because I'm such a nature freaking Yeah, I went crazy for it.
And when you left there, what happened?
And then I finished college and I came home and I worked at the theme parks.
What's that like with how do you get the job at Disney? Like, who's is there somebody who's like a casting person?
Well, yeah, there's talent people.
And you know, I had worked with an improv group called Ssach Theater in Orlando. They at the time contracted out to Disney. So they did all the like in Epcot in Italy, the Canadia, dell Art. You know, they would do all the comedy. That's kind of the roaming, atmospheric comedy. And then they built Pleasure Island, which was the nighttime Disney.
You know, all the night clubs Pleasure Island, Pleasure Island, Welcome Come, Mickey has No PANSA.
An entire island they built that had all these clubs. They had like a big discotheque. They had a country Western sort of music club. It was just kind of like a strip of nighttime establishments, but all in Disney.
But it was late night and the.
Kind of a downtown feel, like a cluster like South Streets.
And they would have like New Year's Eve every night, so they'd have dancers come out and they'd dance. And it was really a fabulous place to work as a young actor because it felt cool and I could and I did a lot of improvisation. But then we also did like radio shows and singing. We could be kind of dirty. I mean, it wasn't filthy. I didn't go full tilt my typical filth that you know of well, I.
Didn't pell out.
But you would interact with the guests, so there you know, you'd be sitting there with some old British dude who's getting drunk and just get into a conversation, and I played Pamelia Perkins, the president of the Adventures Club, and it was kind of a Teddy Roosevelt era sort of place. And I had this big bufont and I could just be as body as hell. I mean I would get on guy's laps and you know, have my legs up in the air because I was like a matron sort
of character. And we used to have such a blast. But then also during that time I went down Penis Avenue for about two years, I was dating men for a little while. I would hook up with people, I mean just meeting like different people. I'd meet, well, just guests, and you know, you'd meet some super super charismatic, handsome person. You'd be sitting there laughing and you'd be in costume, and then they'd be like, what are you guys doing after.
You do the characters? What do these characters do next?
And there was a restaurant and there were bars down the street that they would let us after work go to. So you just take change all your clothes and you know, blow dry the shit out of your hair and go. Now I'm twenty five again. And I'd walk down there and and it was New Year's eve every day it was New Year's but you vomited every day and lost your virginity every day.
That's what was the Pamelion Pamelia Perkins.
Pamelia, Pamelia Perkins. Of course he is banging the guests too.
At a time, I mean for an actor. At that time, I was making really good money and had full insurance everything, had a car, rented a little house.
You know.
It was kind of fun.
It was.
It was a beautiful little It was a beautiful life. And then I got stir crazy with it. And that was just about when happened.
But how does that happen? How do they find you?
It was?
It was a beautifully random, amazing thing.
We'll be back in a minute.
I had worked with Sex Theater. They had a theater downtown. They would call me every so often and I'd go do a set with them where I do a character that I had written. And so they said, you know, we're going to do this sketch comedy pilot called Chucklehead. And they said will you be in it and do
those characters? And they said sure. I mean I was doing like I got beat up in America's most wanted you know, all the local, all the things that were shooting in Orlando, I would do, you know, And I did this lottery character for years in about three states that was played the Worlitz Org and you know sexy characters Alec, you know, but all from the Matron Handbook. I was born at fifty Alec. But they called me. My agent called me one day and she said, are you sitting down?
I said yes.
She said, Saturday Night Live saw that pilot Lauren wants to meet you. And I'm like, okay, for what? And she goes, now, it is not an audition, but he wants to fly you up and talk to you. And I'm like, well, what is it?
An orgy? Am I being summoned for.
What?
In the f And I said okay? And so I flew up there, you know, talk about defecating. I mean, it was like Emodium City the entire two days of getting there. He was two hours, you know, or three hours late for the meeting, but he was super nice. And I sat with Marci Klein and Ayala in the talent room and I was so nervous that they ordered food and they said, we're ordering zen Palette, you know, vegetarian.
We're ordering zen palette. Do you want anything?
And I said, just a just like a coup of white rice would make good, just like rice. And I just got a dry cup of white rice and set and ate it. I went in and he said, we have just cleaned house. It was ninety five. It was when Will Ferrell and everybody came. He said, we've cleaned house. We're starting over. You know, it's gonna rise again. We're hoping, and we're gonna try to infuse it with new talent, and we would like to hire you to be a writer. When I was like, oh, well, I've never done that.
I you know, I don't even I mean, I didn't even use a computer at that point. And I said I can't, you know. And if you tell them you can't, then they will. You will keep saying well, and he said, well we'll show you.
You know, we have people.
But it was so quick.
That it made me worry that there was something wrong, like there was a scam or something like this was all some kind of frickin' joke, because I was like, this can't be.
And so soon after that, were you moving to New York?
I had five days to move, packed up, my whole life gave my animals to my mom temporarily.
Farewell to Pleasure is up.
To New York City, and you know, just was just ungodly miserable, and I mean with fear. But Mike Shoemaker called me right before I left because I was starting to freak out to the point of going, I'm going to my dream place. I mean, I was obsessed with us.
Now.
When I was little, I used to audio tape it. I used to perform Rosanna and Rosanna Dana for my high school in the auditorium, and I thought, I'm just going to be sitting around with like, you know, ten Harvard dudes looking at me, going, who the fuck is who hired Kathy Bates Light and you know, and why is she? And I adore Kathy Baits, by the way, but they were just you know, I thought they I would be so not of their world, of these writerly.
Sort of people.
And I didn't realize how many writers there are performers. And so Shoemaker called me, and I still thank him for this because he really is the reason that I ended up getting.
The balls to get there.
But he called and he said, some people want to say hi, And it was you know, Cindy can Up and Era and Lori Nesso and all these people that were new that were terrified, and they all got on the phone going, we can't wait to meet you. And I hung up the phone and I just burst into tears. I said, it's all going to be okay. No matter what, it's going to be okay. It's just a group of people. It's almost like of all the years of doing plays. It's like it's a new cast. You're seventeen, You're getting
in a cast seventeen years. I've been there yet seventeen, and I was it changed?
Well.
I think in general, comedy has gotten a little, you know, it's gone through its ebbs and flows in terms of things being more character driven or or you know, more conceptual. I mean, I think that show always has a great amount of both. And I always loved the fact that that show had something for everybody. You know, I'd sit with a group of people that I'd love certain things and they'd love certain things, and so I, yeah, I love I love the balance, you know, I love the
balance of it. But one of the biggest things that's changed in general to me is the Internet. Because when I was growing up and you were an actor, you had to create a body of work by really doing it and getting hired, and then they would give you access to tape of it. You know, you couldn't just go on machines and videotape yourself and make a beautifully edited, great comedy piece and put that on the internet. I mean,
you just can't do it. I mean my reel I just remember, you know, I do a tiny role in something and just love that. I was adding that to my reel, and you'd have to go to like a video place and pay the guy to sit there and do it on the gigantic machine.
The Internet has changed things profound Yeah, it.
Just and I think in a bad way. It gave people a sense of entitlement of there isn't as much awe of all of it because they do it themselves. So it's like, oh, yeah, I have you know this and I've done my show. You know, they create it themselves, which is very empowering and wonderful. And it's also getting a lot more comedy out there of hilarious people that would never usually walk into a room nervous and an audition, right right, right.
So that seems to me to have been the condition for me, which is I'd come to SNL and the signals that I picked up in nineteen ninety Jan Hooks and all that crowd back then was you know, my career wasn't that iconic to send up me and my career And so it's not like I'm Stallone or Schwartzenegro or something like that where we do that. So you come in and right away you pick up I've got to become like everybody else and become a member of
the company, right right. And as soon as I got that, as soon as I kind of picked up that vibe from them, I was, you know, asked to come back and come back and come back. And what it does is for me as a performer, it's killed everything else that's supposed to be funny. And I wonder what that's like for you where you're in the world where you work with the funniest people. No matter what people say about SNL, you know, it's not always going to work, but when it works, it's I think it's the best.
What's it been like for you?
Well, you get so you get so insultly, you know, isolated there in great ways and weird because it's there's nothing like it. You cannot compare that experience with anything, but it really is so intense. And you you know, I started writing movies two years ago and working into that, I realized how stretched out the time is, to the point where, you know, I mean, we'll go between dress and air and Lauren will say, I don't like the whole top of that, like, add, you know, a couple
new jokes. So you're coming up with new jokes at eleven fifteen, and so let me let me just.
Put a finer point on that for our radio audience, our podcast audience, because that SNL does a full dress rehearsal at eight o'clock on Saturday night with an audience with a lengthier show. And let's say normally they have seven sketches on the air show, they do like eleven sketches at eight, and they're going to pick what worked best and then they're going to be right. So when that finishes at ten, maybe ten fifteen, maybe ten thirty, who.
Knows, it's a long show.
It's a long show. And then you've got an hour where you're sitting in a room. And in that hour between shows, that's when Lauren and the Pretty and the riders edit that show and choose what they're going to do and ask for rewrites.
And they're getting rid of that audience. They're bringing in a new one. The band is warming up the new audience, and you'll walk through and have a task to change something, and you're walking by these people that are walking in to their seats looking like I'm so excited I'm here, and you're like, I don't know what we're going to have for you, but we're going to do it right now.
You know.
I did a Bobby and Marty one time with Will and Anna, and they found out that we were losing time quickly, and so they said, you have to take like two minutes out of this. I mean it just and it was between the commercial break. So I went downstairs and I was kneeling down with the cue card people. They were just putting tape over sections and we're like.
Okay, does that make sense? Does it does? And go with.
The drown our children?
And I'm pretty sure that if like doctor Oz did my actual age. You know how they test you and you're actually I'm probably one hundred and eighty now because the stress of that. It's just such adrenaline and you know, but I mean the beautiful thing about SNL is hosts will come in and and you know, never you because you were always very approachable. Whenever anyone asked me about hosts, I always tell them that, you know, you are always one of my favorite hosts. I'm not blowing air up your culo.
I get at I'm going to look that way. What is kulo?
And as yeah, well yeah, if you're blowing smoke up.
And could you have men do have other holes.
But like you know, hosts will come in with their people and and they're very nice and very scared, but they they have a little bit of that sometimes because they're fearful and they have people protecting them. And by the end of the week, they're just always at that after party. You know, they're sitting with everybody and laying across everybody because it feels like theater. It feels like I'm in theater camp. And this is what I miss doing.
More from Paul la Pel In a moment, this is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. Paul la Pell has been writing sketches at SNL for seventeen years. But like any of us. Sometimes she just gets tired of comedy.
Oh my god, Yeah, you don't want.
To watch My Sorrow and the Pity.
No, my gal of fourteen years. She watches a lot of TV, and she watches shows that I wouldn't generally watch, like Castle or you know, like hawife I BO, or like murdersh and I mean, you know, murder shows, CSI and CIS.
She'll watch all She'll tape.
She'll tape all these shows in like elementary, all these new shows, and I'll get totally hooked on things and realize that I just love I always loved having drama and comedy together. I mean, that's the fun thing about writing movies now is you can have a moment that's just a heart wrenching moment in a comedy that's that's real.
You know, that feels more three dimensional, because after seventeen years of sketches, you do get a little stir crazy with feeling like you're just writing something on the surface. I mean, it's great to make people laugh, but when I go home, I love to watch dramas or some reality things.
I love to just not think about comedy.
Yeah, I mean, I do the show and I go out there and it's really and I'll say, I'm never doing this. Yeah, this is ridiculous. I can't be bothered with this toasty Thisiclou too young. These people are all young, and they're all crazy and they're all pure Isle and all they talk about is foughts and Brazias and so forth. And then it's I'm gonna go do as you like it in the park. Then of course, you know, Lauren
calls me. I'm like, no, okay, yeah, well he'll call me like I get thrown off the plane on American Airlines for playing words with friends. The phone rings like three four days there, it's Lauren and he literally literally he literally goes, so perhaps we should do something. And I was like, oh, oh my god, I can't believe you people are insane.
This would be the week. This would be the week.
This would be the week, you know, which like that thing where we have to do it now, but you can't say no to them. You feel like your family.
You just forget how immediate it is, you know. Years ago I did a sketch with with a little young, little sweet faced justin Timberlake when he was in sync. I used to write a sketch called six Degrees Celsius and it was like a boy group and Will Ferrell was their manager and he had to stay three hundred feet away from them because clearly he had done some inappropriate things. He had tinted glasses.
Of course, you know.
It was Jimmy Fallon and Chris Catan and Horatio and they were and they were Chris Parnell and they were a boy group. And then we'd have the host in
it well that week and sinc was there. We asked in Sync to be another boy group in this competition on the show, playing a fake boy group, and so I wrote a song called hold the Pick, and they were like McDonald's employees, and so En Sing came out with like McDonald's outfits on and saying hold the pit girl, and they're so they were so crazy talented, like they got there and looked at it for ten minutes and had full harmonies and full choreography. I mean they threw
that shit together. I was just amazed they came on. And then you remember what was the MTV thing every Sunday like the Big I can't think of the name of it, but the show the like show that they'd show all the videos and everything at that time. Do you remember what that was? Okay, well, anyway, it was. It was a very I do know the big video show, you know, the big video show that the kids used
to dance to. But the next morning, I'm in my little apartment and you know, I probably ordered four entrees from some to go things to eat my pain, because you always did. On Sunday and I turned on the TV and Justin Timberlake was on TV on the show at noon in Times Square, and there were just hundreds of girls down there waving to him, and they had a banner with the words to the song hold the
Pickle on the banner that they had painted. And I was looking at it, going that cannot be because we just did this, like I just woke up and we just and then I just remembered like I used to get obsessed. You know, I didn't have the Internet, I didn't have videos, but back at the day, I mean, my god, if I.
Would have grown up in the Internet era, I would have.
Been the queen of like, you know, just having my own fan site. Yeah, because I just loved it and I wanted and we were having a funny conversation the other day.
In my journals. When I was young, I.
Would talk about Rocky because I was obsessed with Rocky Sylvester Stallone and the very first Rocky movie.
And I would talk about, like, in.
Two weeks people Magazine's going to have an article about him, and I would wait until we got that magazine and then I would take it home and I'd cut it out and put it in a script. You know, you had to wait to get information or a photo of someone, or if you really loved to singer, you had to wait for their album to come up. And now you just you just observe.
Years older than you are. Remember when I was a kid, there was no cable, there was no DVD. The trailers for movies and the build up, the ramp up of a campaign to advertise the film was or at least it seemed so far reaching back then. I'll never forget. We went to The Godfather and I was underage and we snuck in. I forget how now we stood in line and it was like three screenings, you know, like one o'clock, four o'clock, seven o'clock, and you go to
the top of the line and didn't get in. So you waited another three hours, you know, reading Mad magazine or some crap we read back then.
And I always say, now people wait to stream a movie and it's like, you know, four minutes to stream it in their tip and their foot and going come on, yeah.
You know exactly. And the other thing is that they'll watch twenty minutes of it. Then they'll pause and they'll go talk on the phone and they'll go play in it. Yeah, now you are? You left to do a television show?
I left.
I left about six years ago to do I wrote au pilot called Thick and Thin that was about two fat sisters that grew up fat and one gets really hot and thin and beautiful.
NBC. Yeah, we shot the pilot.
It got picked up for like thirteen, but it was a bad year for multi camera sitcoms. It was kind of when they were getting phased out. And it was also about a subject that was a little weird still back in that era of you know, there wasn't a whole bunch of stuff with weight stuff. And I really wanted like real people that look fat, you know, that look fat because I had struggled with my weight all my life and lost huge amounts of Wait a couple
times in my life. Sharon Glass and Martin Bull played the parents, and they played my parents, so it was their names. They did all my dad's stick. I mean, it was really a special thing. My parents came to the pilot, and you know, it was it was very emotional and wonderful and fun. But the process of developing a network show like that is so hard, and I really, in hindsight learned so you know, learn so many things after the fact.
You know, it's one thing you learned that you can say, what'd you learn?
Well, the biggest thing I learned was I'm a people pleaser and I always like to get to know people and see the good sides of them, and I wanted to have a lot of positive energy with them because I had known so many people that develop stuff that were like welcome to hell. You know, everyone just gets so negative about it. And I thought, you know what, I'm going to go into this. I'm so lucky to
be doing this. I'm so thrilled. But I befriended everyone so intensely, you know, especially like network people and everything. I befriended everyone, so then there was this sort of discomfort at telling them things they didn't want to hear,
or me pushing back in bigger ways. And because I had already established that we're all just friends and we're all having fun and we're laughing, then they would suggest things that were just show ruining and I would just be like, okay, well, you know, and I just at the time didn't really have my voice as a creative person to lead something like that, you know, so I
regret that, and I regret not pushing more. I mean, casting was, you know, a little brutal, just because of the weight thing is they would they would bring people in that were I wanted real people that were you know, I wanted the other sister to be to be a real heavy person. And when they'd audition heavy people sometimes I'd watch their faces when they're auditioning them, and they're kind of like looking at their bodies, and I'm going, this is not good. They don't get it that like
the you know, Roseanne was freaking huge hit show. It's like, come on, I don't even remember who said this to me, but one of the network people pulled me aside during one of the castings and she said, did you audition this other girl for that part? For the heavy sister and I said no. I auditioned her for the thin sister, and she said, you couldn't pad her, could you. And I just remember walking away going, this is so dead in the water.
You know, now movies, You're doing a movie now?
Yeah, I did.
I worked a little bit on Bridesmaids. I just came a couple of different times and just you know, pitched jokes on the set, did that kind of thing. Had never done anything movie wise ever, And I really really had fun doing it. I really enjoyed it. And then I jud started hiring me to do some rewrites on different movies and punch ups and stuff, and I started to see, you know, because I had tried to get
into it before in other eras of my life. But at the same time, I had had an idea for a while about my journal, my childhood journal, of doing something with it. I wanted to do a little play
based on it. I'd wanted to do something with it, and Tina had, you know, I'd read it to her many times in s and L I'd read it to people before I came up with an idea for a movie to do to pitch, and I pitched it to Universal and they bought it with Tina attached to it as a producer and potentially to be in it, And so I wrote that that's in the work. So we're waiting to find out all the finals on you know, on that, what's happening with that. It's it's it's been
you know, gone through its rewrites and all that. So I'm excited about that about two sisters and Judd and I just wrote a movie, and then last summer I worked on my first full movie experience with This is forty. I was the executive producer on that.
This sounds horrible, but do you ever wonder what it would be like if you and your wife were separated by something bigger death like her death? I have given it a fair amount of thought, not in any painful way, but is like a gentle floating off. It's got to be peaceful.
I mean, this is the mother of your children.
And then the new wife would be great.
God, I can't wait to meet my second wife.
I hope she likes me better than this one.
I've finally kind of gotten my foothold in the movie thing now and it's really fun.
I really love it.
I mean, it's a lot of it's a lot of waiting around for news on things. It's a lot of you know, I can't plan anything because you don't know what your next year is going to be a different find out. But so beautiful to be able to work at home with my animals and D and just like to be.
Our home buddy, aren't you Well you always come bacted the same thing when I've spoken to you with Yeah, I was despondent when you left because you know it was you were such a great You're such a great rider. You're one of my favorite writers of all times. You're so funny. No but everything mean that and you And then when you left and you said the same that, You're like, Oh, just want to go home to D and my animals, my animal animal.
I want to go live the lesbian life. I want to be on a lesbian far. I want to wear my dance go clogs.
I want to get a mag light and go under a dumpster and get some feral cats.
Out of there.
I have a horse up there, I have, you know, just it's so beautiful and inexpensive up there in the Hudson Valley. It's like the amazing place, but also just I'm realizing too, just the finite amount of time. You know, I've spent more time since I've been doing the movie stuff the last two years, I've spent more time with my family. I've been down in Florida a lot to visit them. It's just feeling so much better for me.
And also, I love like Lauren whenever I'm there. I did the Louis ck Show, and I'm doing this next to here, and and you know, Lauren will say to it's still fun, right, it's fun. You had fun, and I go, oh my god, it's amazing. But if I did it all the time now, I would be like a you know, a bitter hag, because I just feel like I wasn't having time or energy to do other things.
And also everyone is very young. I mean my nieces and nephews I saw delivered out of my sister's vagine and they are in their mid.
Twenties and one's a physician's assistant.
And I mean, I've named myself at SNL Nanny SNL because I'll sit at the reway table, like, what is the name of that where's that detective on television?
I'm like, I call myself Grandpa Oh my god, I got you know, Grandpa, They'll knock on the door and sleeper ready. I'm like, Grandpa will be right there. I'll be right there. God jamm it.
But if you have a good night there, you feel like you're twenty again. I mean, you know, if you have a night where you feel like I mean, last week I had a really fun scotch I wrote with Kate McKinnon for her and Louis c. K and it was funny and dirty and where they were at last call at a bar and they're just trying to find common ground because they know they're the only two people left.
So they're like, wait, you're from Arizona. Oh my god, I'm from northern California. That's crazy. And they were.
They made out in the most disgusting, face eating way you could ever imagine. And I just went home on that old school SNL high, just a whole high, you know, like the whole weekend, just bouncing off the walls. And then you start going, maybe I could do this all the time.
I got no, I'm gonna do it.
I would leave there after a good show, I leave there's I'm gonna be a cast edition.
I'll do even odd shows like the gas Ration.
Now now Twitter, You're on Twitter. On on Twitter? You kill me on Twitter?
Thank you.
I talk about like I was laying on a bed and I was having a great time and I was eating sacks and I was really cozy and everything was just I felt so great, and then security guard came up me. You know, tgget is closed.
Man.
Yeah, it's like the Tony Benet routine.
People always really respond to my target tweets.
Twitter is just another form for you.
Twitter is really I got very addicted to it just because it's so simple and it's like a video game for comedy writers to just do a one liner about something. And I started doing these hey young girl tweets and I might do a little book of them maybe and illustrate it. You know, my nieces, I just used to drive them insane when they were.
Growing up because I was so.
Girls.
I remember, Hey young girls, keep your boobs in your shirt, your button, your pants, your eyes on, your dreams, your head in the cloud.
You know that I can also say the thing about you if the guy does this.
Yeah, the hey young girl stuff just came out of my nieces because I would bring them to Esnel and they were just these dropped out gorgeous girls. And they would have people I'm not talking about people just checking them out, but like at the if I brought them backstage or whatever, there'd be some some dude that would just end up coming up and saying, you know, really
aggressive checking them out. And so they still imitate me how I would grab them with my meaty, polish firm wife arm and she's fourteen.
You want to talk about it.
I mean I would just become this raving crazy woman looking at them, like, you know, and so I always i'd always be like, are you're sexually active? I would always want to know all their details and everything.
Like a character out of our rock huts and movie.
Yeah, the chaperone, Yeah, I'm the chaperone.
That's you're all sturrying my son away from the Hucci.
You're a Lucie dancers.
You know, you're a woman, and you're a woman in comedy. And comedy has changed a lot over the last forty years, but I you know, I feel like it's changed a lot over the last fifteen years. It's even more. You've got people who are much more you know, they're just like the guys I mean Sarah silvermen and people who
are much more in living color, if you will. I wanted to ask you, you know, your assessment of that, how that's changed for women over your career, and also do you think that there's like certain glass ceilings still, like on late night comedy shows, like do you think they'll ever replace Letterman? Or like can a woman do that job? Because you have women hosting daytime shows, right and any one's on during the day, but the big three in the networks they don't have a woman doing
that show. Do you think that'll ever change?
I don't know.
I mean it's you know, I remember that era where a couple of them were doing it, Joan Rivers and different people were trying it, and they were you know, they were all stand ups, but they had been around for.
A long time, but not lately.
So I feel like now a lot of those young funny girls are either getting their own show, you know, doing a show, a television show, but not a talk show, you know. I mean Jimmy, he's such a fan of everyone and so enthusiastic and joyful about music and everything that that was like a perfect fit for him and hilarious so he worked out so great for that. But
I think with women it's also sometimes hard. At SNL, like with auditions now, where you go, well, you see people and you go, where are a lot of the super funny you know, super funny women and you know they're around, you know they exist, but a lot of them do. They are young, and they they're aggressively getting
their own shows and stuff like that. The second year I was at SNL, second or third, I remember having an agent say to me, yeah, we got to get you, uh, you know, we got to get a game plan for you and get you know, so you can get get out of here and and get a get a show going.
And all that.
And I remember thinking, what are they talking about?
I'm like, what are you talking about? You know, this is like the dream job. So but I think I think for women it's just like I've always said about us and L, it's like the funny rises to the top with it. And if somebody's super funny and has abandon and enjoy and they're not trying, you know, I don't like ever with a comedy person them acting like someone else or acting dirty just to be funny. I'm
the filthiest person on earth. But if it's not funny dirty, if I'm not being funny dirty, you know, then forget it, because there's got to be some class to my to my vulvage.
If a vul of a joke does not have a class to it, then forget it.
But you know, for a while, there are some auditions I would watch where girls would come out and just try to just sex it up and be funny and dirty, you know, and it's like, that's not fun.
And you feel like not all of them, certainly, but enough of them. They go out in front of a camera, a lot of them in the comedy world, and they think feel like, well, I don't want to go too far over this long because I don't want to lose this other things. I really would like to kiss Leo in a movie, right, I want to be as.
Much I think.
You don't want to see anyone thinking too hard while they're you know, the greatest auditions at SNL were people that came in purely as themselves, came in, did a bunch of crazy ass characters, and you just went, this is a force of nature?
What is this? What is this human?
Like? They were making me laugh so hard and I don't even know where they're getting it from.
Women have the condition though, where it's like they sit there and they you know, I mean I've seen women who they would make fun of actresses, I mean about comedy. Yeah, they would just tear apart. They would lacerate actresses who they thought were, you know, leaning too much on the sex button. And then those comedy actresses became stars and they popped another button and they put the makeup on their cleavage and they were like and they were just
like they were camera ready. I mean, they became the thing. They made fun of it. Yeah, and you and you realize for women, that's a tough angle.
How many girls tended to grow up being the goofy looking you know, the goofy looking ones that.
Weren't getting the attention that way.
So when they become famous and have a lot of money and people putting beautiful dresses on them, I think they do go They do go.
That way, you know.
I mean, I've got a lot of pretty sparkly pantsuits I wear to the Emmys now, and I really get up my own ass on it.
Because Paula Pell will soon be stepping out in those paths for the release of This Is forty, a film she helped produce, set to open December twenty First, this is Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing. Comes from w NYC Radio