- [Announcer] Funding for "Overheard with Evan Smith" is provided in part by, Hillco Partners, a Texas government affairs consultancy, Claire and Carl Stuart, and by Laura and John Beckworth, Hobby Family Foundation.

- I'm Evan Smith.

They're the comedians, writers, and actors, who've lent their talents to one of the iconic institutions in American comedy, and have gone on to become some of the biggest names in entertainment and pop culture.

They're the alums of "Saturday Night Live".

This is "Overheard".

(audience clapping) Let's be honest, is this about the ability to learn or is this about the experience of not having been taught properly?

How have you avoided what has befallen other nations in Africa and- You could say that he'd made his own bed, but you caused him to sleep in it.

You know, you saw a problem and over time took it on and- Let's start with the sizzle before we get to the steak.

Are you gonna run for president?

I think I just got an F from you, actually.

(audience laughs) This is "Overheard" (audience applauds) You got on the show in part because of Dana Carvey, right?

Dana Carvey got- - Well, Dana and I, yeah.

Dana and I knew each other from the standup circuit.

And Dana was also renting a room over the garage in this house I was renting with some other comics in the Hollywood Hills.

When he came down from San San Francisco, he would stay there.

And, you know, we would kind of jam in the driveway, you know, with different kind of character stuff.

I wasn't a character impressionist or anything, you know, I just did standup.

But Dana, of course was into all that.

- [Evan] Seemed like that was his big thing.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- So Dana got the show that Summer of '86, and they start in the fall.

So he goes to New York.

I'm dating Jan Hooks at the time.

- Really?

- We were friends for about 6 years and then we started dating, which is the best way to do it.

(laughs) But that didn't last.

(audience laughs) - She was on the show at that point?

- She was not on the show.

- Not on the show.

- I was excited for Dana and for Jan, because they were up for "Saturday Night Live".

Dana had it already.

Jan was up for it.

Sure to get it.

And I'm reading backstage live, "Saturday Night Live", and excited for them.

Never thinking I would ever be on that show, because I didn't really even have the representation to get me an audition, and I didn't do characters.

I never did a improv, you know, I wasn't brought up in the improv ranks.

And so, you know, Dana calls me from New York that summer and he goes, "Hey, I think they're still looking for one more cast member, I told them about you and I think they might want to see your tapes."

- I want to ask you about Weekend Update, specifically, you know, the show is now going through a transition, as it has a couple different times from Seth Meyers, now to Cecily Strong being the only anchor of that program.

You know, she's talked about the challenge and the pressure, you know, and having to step into those shoes, what it's like, you know, you were 3 years in that chair.

You did a great jo, people remember that time very fondly.

Can you talk about what it was like?

'Cause it is really not like being just a regular cast member.

- Right, well it's added responsibility, you know, especially if you're doing sketches as well.

You know, I mean, Dennis did a great job up there, but he wasn't doing sketches mostly.

- That's all he did.

- Yeah.

- Tina Fey most of the time also was just not doing sketches.

- But Tina Fey was also the head writer on the show, yeah.

It was hard to get people to write jokes for Weekend Update, because it wasn't a glorifying position.

You know, people on Monday weren't talking about Weekend Update jokes so much.

They're talking more about characters or whatever they saw.

And so they would try to entice writers to come up to the 17th floor at "30 Rock" on Saturday morning.

Because you couldn't really write jokes before that, because all the other late night talk show hosts would do the jokes already, you know, they would cover that territory.

So you had to really wait until like Friday night, Saturday morning.

And so they would put out a breakfast buffet, and newspapers, and AP photos.

There was no internet or Google at the time, so AP photos and newspapers.

And a lot of the writers would come up just to have breakfast and read the paper, you know?

It was a hot buffet, you know?

And then some of the younger writers would come up to try to write jokes, but they mostly weren't good.

(audience laughs) And then there was Al Franken who was, you know, a political junkie and a couple other people.

And then I would write, maybe I'd get maybe three or four jokes on a week, and then I would pay out of my own pocket, $50 to friends on the West Coast or in New York to fax me in jokes.

- Yep.

- That I would pay for.

- Comedy writers.

- Comedy, yeah, people that wanted to write.

And so we would get about 20 jokes out of all that.

But it was a fun job.

It was a fun, you know, thing.

It was a nice change for me after being on the show for five years.

- It was a transformational thing to get that show, right?

For everyone who's been on that show, even the people who had bad experiences on that show, will say that being on that program transformed their careers.

- I guess so, yeah.

For me it happened so- (audience members sneezes) Bless you.

For me, it happened so quickly (audience laughs) because, you know, I had like three days to get to New York And I had friends that didn't even know I was on the show.

And, but it does change your life, you know, just to be on that show and to be in New York.

And I enjoyed it.

I liked it.

You know, a lot of people complained about the schedule and the stress, but I knew, for me, it was a marathon, it wasn't a sprint.

- Right, it's almost a cliche at this point to have been on the show and to say, "Oh, hours were so bad and everything was so difficult.

", you know?

- Yeah.

I enjoyed it.

I loved it.

You know, I didn't stay up late like a lot of people.

You know, the original cast would stay up, you know, Tuesday night all night long and write sketches for the next day.

And that's because they were doing drugs back then, you know?

(audience laughs) And when I came in on the show, nobody was doing drugs, you know?

I came in with Phil Hartman and Dana Carvey and, you know, Jan Hooks and those people, and everybody was pretty responsible.

It was a different time then too.

So, you know, it was sensible hours for me.

And, you know, I got to meet some of my idols that I, you know, grew up watching or listening to, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, James Taylor, all these people that I loved and I got to be friends with, and Steve Martin.

And so I love the job.

- It is a really hard job though, because you have to write yourself into the show.

It's not like you're just hanging around- - Yeah, would you talk about that?

I don't think people fully appreciate how responsible you are for your own time.

- Yeah, it's a writing job.

- Right.

- And I had, you know, I had written my show, but I would kind of write it orally.

I would work on it in my head, and kind of write the beats, and walk around the block, and then I'd do it in front of the audience.

And okay they like that joke.

Like that, that didn't work.

I kind of edit it in my head and just perform it and learn it orally.

So when I went to SNL, I was like, oh, my God.

There were a lot of people from the Groundlings, they'd be typing, and I was like, I have characters, but I just had to figure out how to get them on the page.

And it was terrifying.

I remember like, ugh, crying and feeling like the job was over my head.

But I met this one writer, Steve Koren, who I'm still really close to.

And he goes, "Well, tell me, what did you do on your show?

Just tell me how...", oh and I had a picture of Mary Catherine Gallagher, and I showed all the writers.

I go, "I did this character in my stage show, you know, do you think I could?"

And they go, "Well, what is it?"

And I go, "Well, she does this."

They're like, they would, I'd write a little out and they'd go, "Yeah, the reason that that's not gonna work is because of this, and that's not gonna work 'cause of this and that."

And I was like, God, it was so frustrating.

But then this one guy, Steve Koren, was like, sat down with me and he goes, "Tell me what you did in your show."

And I go, "Okay, well I come out and I go, 'Hi, I'm Mary Catherine Gallagher.

Then I go like this.

Then I go like that.

Then I go like that.

Then I do that, that, that."

And he basically just, we wrote it up together.

- Wrote it out.

Yeah.

- And it was the first sketch that I kind of got on and it killed, it went great.

And I remember Gabriel Byrne was the host, and I don't know if they knew what it was gonna be, I think they didn't, maybe they didn't really believe in it because, basically on Saturday, the dress rehearsal before the live show, they kind of order the show.

They'll put at the top of the rehearsal what they think is gonna be like the hits, and then the stuff that might get, that might not make it to air they put at the bottom.

And I remember my thing was for the rehearsal on Saturday was way at the bottom where they didn't even have time to rehearse it.

It was like, "Sorry, it's lunch.

Good luck."

You know, and I was so mad, and it was way at the bottom of the show for dress rehearsal, it made me so mad.

I just felt like they're not, I don't think they know what this is gonna be like, how physical it's gonna be.

So the kind of, I kind of, so basically during the dress rehearsal, it went great.

I just went crazy and knocked into the chairs and performed it and Will Ferrell was in it.

And it got, and then basically what happens is you do the dress rehearsal at 8 o'clock and then you, you don't know what's gonna get on air.

You're kind of trying out your sketches.

And then at 11 o'clock you go into Lorne Michael's office and you look on this board and see what sketches made it.

And there will be a lot that will be cut, like four or five.

So it's like seeing if you're cast in a play.

So you go in your costume from dress rehearsal, like say you did a cupcake sketch and you would go into Lorne's office in your cupcake, and you could see that you're like, "Oh, my cupcake sketch got cut."

So you see people like in the costumes with like tears running down their eyes.

(audience laughs) You know?

But basically my Mary Catherine Gallagher got moved from the bottom to the top.

And I was like, yes!

- Great.

Yeah.

- And I went out there and it went great.

And then so many people responded to it.

So that was really what gave me confidence to like, I've got these characters, I just gotta figure out how to get the characters to my show on air.

- Yeah.

- But like I said, you had to write yourself a spot to get on.

- What was the first sketch that you wrote that got on air?

- So my first show, the first sketch of the show, I wrote.

- That's like back to baseball.

That's like somebody getting up to plate for the first time in the major, home Run.

- I didn't know.

Right?

I didn't know how, 'cause then the next few shows I didn't have anything.

- Yeah.

- So I was like, oh yeah, this is more.

But it was a sketch I wrote, Steve, my first first host and musical guest were Steve Carell and Kanye West, which is pretty awesome.

- Yeah.

Pretty good.

- Pretty awesome booking.

Couldn't line that up better.

So Steve, it was Steve Carell and Amy Poehler in the sketch.

And it was, it was the early days of JetBlue Airlines.

And there was a mechanical problem on the plane, and people were watching television and they were watching coverage of their own imminent plane crash.

(audience laughs) - Hilarious.

- Yeah, and luckily the plane landed safely and it was okay.

- Right.

Yeah.

- So you could joke about it, but it was like this rare moment that people were actually watching, and so it was her watching and freaking out, or her watching and freaking out and him being oblivious and watching like a cartoon and being really happy.

You know and not really listening.

And that was, you know, it was topical for that week.

And, you know, and it worked out and it got on, but it was kind of a crazy shooting the moon for a show.

- Yeah, now how do you go from being a writer to being the head writer, or you were co-head writer at one point?

- Yeah, it's crazy when you start, you're so anxious, you know, because you don't know whether you're gonna make it and you don't know how it works.

And then every year gets more and more anxious.

You think it would get- - You think it's gonna get better.

- You think it would get easier like, oh my God, at least I know I have a job.

And it gets more and more, more and more anxiety.

Because each year you have a little more responsibility.

You usually get a few more sketches on.

- Yep.

- You know, you might have a sketch every week or maybe eventually two every week or three every week.

And that gets really stressful.

And so, but it's a slow process of building up the responsibility and getting to that position.

So I was a writer for a while and started having more success as a writer, more regularly, and then got promoted to being a writing supervisor.

Like, and that's a stage sometimes people go through.

'Cause Seth was still there, and Andrew Steele, who was the other writer when I started, who's great, was still there.

And so I kind of worked up and got that position.

And there are two writers now, Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider on our show who have that position, who are, you know, are gonna move up at some point.

- They're in the chute.

- Yeah, who are great writers and that, but it's a way you kind of step out that, and you start going into meetings with Lorne and seeing how things are picked, which always seem, when you're on the other side, feels like the biggest mystery in the world.

- Of course.

- It's like seeing behind the curtain.

- Yeah.

- Even within our show.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- And who makes decisions and how that works.

So you start getting glimpses of that and occasionally he might say, "You know, Colin, what do you think about that sketch?"

And you'll be like, "I didn't know I had to have an opinion.

It's great.

I love it."

Oh God, I blew it.

You know, you don't know what to say.

And then you get more comfortable in that space.

And then I probably did that for two years, or three years, and then became head writer with Seth.

- I wanna know what it took to get you from the Lampoon or from the paper on Staten Island to "Saturday Night Live", again, in the realm of stories of how people got to the show, there are people who tried, and tried, and tried year after year after year, and finally got on.

There are people like Marc Maron who tried and tried and never got on and are still mad about it.

- Of course, yeah.

- You made a pretty quick path right there.

- Yeah, and it's, you know, I mean obviously I was very lucky on a lot of levels that that's the way it shook out.

I mean, when I, you know, like even when I applied for the Lampoon, it took me a year and a half to get in out of college, you know, when I was in college.

So that process was writing as much as you possibly could.

People would look at it, give you notes, you'd submit.

There were different kind of levels that you could get to.

And I got really close twice and didn't get in.

And the third time I got in.

- Yeah.

- And so it was kind of similar when you apply to places as a writer, that's the mentality you have to have is you have to do it a lot.

- More likely not to do it or not to get it.

- You're almost guaranteed to not get it.

- Right.

- So you have to, it's just a crapshoot.

Even if you're really talented and really good, it's a crapshoot, it's a luck thing of, if they have a spot open or they don't.

But you have to go in with it, into the process thinking I have to do, I have to be writing constantly.

So that's what I did with the Lampoon and that's what I did when I graduated, I applied everywhere I could.

So I applied to Letterman, you know, twice within that year.

I applied to Conan.

I applied to "Daily show".

I applied to, I wrote a spec script for "Arrested Development" at the time.

You know, I wrote a pilot about the fire department with a friend of mine.

- Right.

- And while I was doing the other jobs, because I knew that's what I wanted to do and I didn't know where anyone would take me.

And right like when I was finishing Harvard, I submitted a packet to "SNL" also that I dunno if anyone even read or saw.

And I'm sure it was terrible.

And then I did it another that year later and was lucky enough to get it.

- There's been a history of weekend update as a sole practitioner deal.

- Yes.

- But then there's the partnership.

And there've been great partnerships.

Tina and Amy.

- Yeah.

- You know, it was Jimmy and- - Jimmy and Tina.

- Tina.

- And then Tina and Amy.

- And then Tina and Amy.

- And then Amy and Seth.

- And then Amy and Seth.

So you and Michael Che get thrown together.

And I remember Michael Che briefly as one of the reporters on "The Daily Show".

And he was terrific and terrifically funny.

I don't know that I would've imagined him in this role, but you seem to have almost instantly, despite what Twitter may say occasionally.

- Sure.

- You have a thing, the two of you really work well together as a team.

- I mean, I love Michael and he's, I can't imagine, it's great working with him.

- Did you know him before?

- Yeah, I knew him as a standup and I brought him in as a writer at "SNL".

- Oh great.

Oh great.

- Because he was, but only just 'cause he was clearly very funny, I mean, anyone would've hired him.

It was not like, but he was, I just liked his style, I liked his comedy a lot.

Meeting him, you could tell he was, you know, he was just a humble guy, even though he is confident.

And I don't know, I just liked him.

And then he was a great writer at our show.

He's been, still is a great writer at our show.

- Right.

- And then he basically just in the summer, he did "The Daily Show".

When we stopped writing.

- I mean, it was just a cup of coffee, right?

- It was two or three months.

- Yeah.

- And then when that happened.

And the thing with he and I working together is he really pushes me, and pushed me from the beginning to make it our own.

Which was something I think because I had been in that system so long, and when I came in, I didn't push as much immediately to say, "No, this is how I do things."

Because there was a whole system in place.

All the writers were still there, you know, from when Seth was doing- - Do the two of you write the show, write the segment pardon, yourselves or others write as well?

- We have writers who are great, who write for us and we write stuff for it too.

And sometimes, especially this year, we've been doing more where the two of us will go off and write some of the things that are more back and forth.

And we'll talk through it the way we would in, you know, in real Life.

- On "Saturday Night Live" the characters are ones that you, as an individual, I think most people don't appreciate how the show works, you are largely responsible for your own fate there, right?

- Well, yes, but you need the support of the other writers.

- Oh, of course.

- It's not like it's an island where you just sort of write something and it goes on the air, you kind of need the other writers to shape it a little bit, put some context to it.

- But you develop, in theory, you develop the characters and they help flesh them out- - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- And help write the sketches, but they don't come to you and say, "You ought to do Queen Elizabeth as if she's a character in a guy Richie movie."

- Right, right.

- They don't say, you know, "You should do Prince."

or "You should do The Californians."

- True.

True.

But sometimes they do come to you and they go like, "Can you do a crazy drag queen?"

- Right.

You know, just generically.

- Yeah, and then you kind of, you do sort of, there's a writer there, James Anderson, we, I'd say, we come up with some stuff together.

So it's a combination.

Some stuff, I'll come into the office and I'll say, "I've got this character."

But there are times where someone will say like, "Can you do this kind of person?"

And then together you start forming that.

So some of it does happen as accidents.

There are some accidents that happen that have gone on to be their own character.

- Do you occasionally get asked to do celebrity caricatures or to do other kinds of characters that you think, I don't really wanna do this, but okay, I'll take one for the show, and you have to- - I don't think in terms of I don't wanna do it.

I think like me, I don't think that's really me.

I don't know if I have a take on it and then it works out great.

Like, I remember David Lee Roth, one sketch they were like, "Can you do David Lee Roth?"

I was like, "I don't think so."

And then I did it anyway and it was a lot of fun.

- Even though, right.

Was was Obama one where they came to you and said, "We think you should do Obama when he was elected?"

- Yeah Lorne and Marci Klein were like, they presented it more like, "Do you wanna give it a try?"

And I was like, my answer's always yes.

I'm like, "Yeah."

- You're generally game for that sort of stuff.

- It's a sketch show.

It's a variety sketch show.

Why would I ever want to be like, "No."?

(audience laughs) You know?

It's like, I don't care.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, let's give it a try.

- And is the idea that you being associated with certain of these characters kind of over and over, people probably walk up to in the street and say, "Do Prince."

or do- - Yeah it's awesome.

- You don't mind that?

Because I imagine after a while it gets a little tiresome?

- No.

No.

- I wanted to ask you about just a couple of the characters you've developed and ask you just to take us through your creative process, so I mentioned the Queen Elizabeth one, this is a personal favorite of mine where the queen seems all nice and very demure and everything.

And then people leave the room and suddenly- - It's one of my favorites too, by the way.

- It it is an absolutely hilarious thing.

- Well, thank you.

- How did you, what was the thought process behind that?

- Well I wrote, we wrote those with John Mulaney, he's another writer there who's a brilliant comedian.

And Bill a little bit too.

- Bill Hader plays- - Bill Hader yeah, plays Philip, and then the idea behind this, well first of all, when I'm doing the sketch, I love it because it feels like I'm on a sketch show.

Like I feel like, wow, this is what it's like to be on a sketch show, you know where it's like pure, it's just comedy and I just, for me, I just like doing an impression of Mick Jones from The Clash.

That's all that is.

- That's who it's based on?

- Oh, totally.

(audience laughs) And then, you know.

- Right down to her playing the guitar, I mean right- - Yeah.

Yeah.

And then we wrote like a Clash like song for it.

But that was just like, it's an idea that's been done before the sort of like behind closed doors kind of thing.

- But it's happened, there was the old "Saturday Night Live" sketch of Phil Hartman as Ronald Reagan.

- Same idea.

- Same kind of deal where once everyone's outta the room he's a different person.

- Yeah, which I love.

It's such a great thing.

And then, you know, that was just something that we just love to do, I love doing that sketch.

It's so fun.

- Now of all the celebrity impressions, the straights, 'cause I don't think of that really is so much of a celebrity impression, 'cause it's so exaggerated- - We'll never know.

- We don't, it's true.

(audience laughs) That's actually right, we've not been in the room.

Maybe she's, maybe she is Mick Jones.

Penny Marshall.

- Uh-huh.

- The Penny Marshall impression just seems so great.

(audience laughs) - Oh thanks.

- And over the top.

On something like that, what's your thought process there?

- Oh, that, I think that was bestowed on me as well.

I think there was some writers, Marika Sawyer being one of them, they came up with a sketch idea called The Looker.

'Cause there were so many cable shows that were like, you know, these detectives and stuff that I had not had an impression and they were like, "Would you mind doing, can you try Penny Marshall on there?"

Just, you know.

(audience laughs) You know, she's kind of like, she doesn't you know, open her mouth when she talks and then we just did, we just did it.

- It's as much physical as anything.

- Yeah.

- It's the look.

- So that, I didn't think about it beforehand, and then it was easy to do.

- The life of somebody in your situation, whether you're a cast member or a featured player.

The stories we've heard on this show, and we've heard people say elsewhere, it's a little bit like a hamster wheel.

There's not really an off switch, you're constantly running, running, running all week.

- Yeah, definitely.

- That's true?

That's your experience?

- That is for me at least.

I am constantly, well, I mean, the show itself is always going when it's in production.

And I am constantly thinking about the show and what I'm gonna write, what I'm gonna do, and how I'm gonna get better, and so I don't stop.

- So take us through a typical week.

What would a typical week look like?

- Monday.

(laughs) - Monday.

- Monday we go in and we pitch to the host.

The pitches are very short, they're like kind of ideas.

Then you kind of make appointments with writers.

Then Tuesday you come in and you write all night.

I tend to leave around between 4:00 AM to 7:00 AM in the morning, then come back Wednesday for a table read that takes place at 2 or 3.

Then they pick the show after the table read, everything goes into production.

You rehearse Thursday, Friday.

Friday they shoot all the videos.

And Saturday's the show.

- And you have a fair amount of ideas, I'm sure, you were the kind of person who had enough ideas to make videos that went on the internet.

You have ideas, and so you probably come in like everybody else and you're pitching away early in the week.

- Yeah everybody pulls their weight in a significant way.

Like every cast member contributes and almost as much as writers in however ways that they can.

- Are the featured players considered less worthy of pitching ideas than the full fledged cast members?

- No, the pitch meeting is actually everybody, Lorne goes around the room, and he'll just call your name out.

And you say you're one or two ideas very quickly and then he just moves on.

- Right.

- So it's kind of like a formality.

But everybody gets a chance to say something.

- So everything is equal at that stage.

- Oh yeah, and if you say something that people like, then they'll like be like, "Oh, we like that.

You should write it."

Which is cool.

- And you do a fair amount of writing on the show?

- Yes.

- You do?

Writing for yourself as well as writing for others?

- You have to write for the host, yourself, as many people as you can include.

Especially with this cast being as big as- - It's a very large cast.

- It's a very large cast.

And I think everybody's really cognizant of trying to get people involved.

It's the hardest job in the industry.

It's a miracle that there's a show any week.

I think that everybody on the show is so talented and I feel like people, I don't know, I just, there's, it's so, it's amazing.

I have such, my respect for it is, I have a lot of respect.

- And of course we only, the part that we see is probably only a portion of it.

There's an enormous amount going on.

- Oh yeah, you don't see, I mean, I think the biggest thing is when people come to the show, they're always like, "Oh, it's so much smaller."

It's because it is like, they'll be one portion of the studio where they'll put up three sketches.

Because there's not space to put everything.

So they'll just like tear it apart and then put it back up.

And the fact that it's such a well oiled machine and that people have been working there for such a long time.

- And the fact that it's a live show.

- And it's a live show.

I mean, the odds are stacked against us in every way.

- What about your brief stint on "Saturday Night Live" do you want talk about, was it a good thing- - It's brevity.

- Or a bad thing?

Well, you know, there was a people, now the show is basically healthy again, or healthy-ish.

- Much better.

Yeah.

- But if you think about that period, it was not the healthiest period in the life of the series.

- That was the period when Matt Roush would write a column every single Monday saying, "Please pull this show off the air."

- Put this out of its misery.

- It's New York Post at the time.

- At the time.

Right.

- I think he is- - Later TV Guide.

- Yeah, no it was, the show was a mess, you know?

They just didn't quite know what to do with it.

And also- - And you joined fairly, I mean, you were late- - Oh, yeah.

- Mid 40s at the time?

- Yeah.

Mid 40s.

- Right you may have been, I think the story is you may be the oldest cast member- - Definitely.

- Ever added in the history of the program.

- I definitely.

And I'm also one of two people who have been host, cast member, and musical guest.

- And musical guest.

- Dan Aykroyd and I.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

- But it wasn't a bad experience necessarily.

It was nothing that you looked back unhappily.

- No, you know the best part about it, you know, I've never been an infighter really, you know, and there was- So much struggle going on to get pieces on.

And, you know, I was in 26 shows and I got 20 sketches on the air as a writer, mostly writing with Al Franken, I wrote a lot of stuff with him.

And Dave Mandel, who's a wonderful writer, who's now does "The Larry Sanders Show".

Dave and I wrote some fun stuff together.

So I really had no complaints there.

Occasionally I would write a sketch, and Lorne would sum it up beautifully.

Lorne Michaels, he would say, "This will never be anyone's favorite sketch, but it's important that we have it on."

(audience laughs) And it was usually something, it got a little highbrow.

- Wow.

- Yeah, I know, I know.

- Damning with faint praise times- - No, no, no, no, he was actually, he liked the sketches, you know?

But they weren't- - In theory, he could've not had it on if he didn't.

- Yeah it wasn't like sketches that people despised, but they kept coming back, you know?

Or sketches that were, you know, like Wayne's World, America could have watched that every week.

- Every week.

- Yeah.

Because they was just really, you know, it hit 'em.

- So that's just a line on your resume, but nothing too- - No, no, no, it was fine.

And I, you know, I got to know some cool people, you know, I worked with some really nice people there.

And I've stayed friends with them.

And it's a very interesting thing.

What I'd like to say is that the time to do "SNL" is when you're 28 and hungry.

I was 45 and I really didn't care, you know?

(audience laughs) It was like, hey really, we'll try this for a while, and then I get to, they're gonna pay me, I'm living in my own hometown, you know, it'd be a cool thing.

And then they'll say goodbye and I'll go back home.

- That's a healthy attitude to have.

- You know what, there are so many opportunities for angst in this world.

Skip some.

- Yeah.

(audience laughs) Skip every other one.

Because there are some that won't let you leave 'em alone.

- [Evan] We'd love to have you join us in the studio.

Visit our website at klru.org/overheard to find invitations to interviews, Q and As with our audience and guests, and an archive of past episodes.

(lighthearted upbeat music) (lighthearted upbeat music continues) (lighthearted upbeat music continues) - [Announcer] Funding for "Overheard with Evan Smith" is provided in part by, Hillco Partners, a Texas government affairs consultancy, Claire and Carl Stuart, and by Laura and John Beckworth, Hobby Family Foundation.

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