Wasn't That Special: 50 Years of SNL Podcast

On this surprise free edition of Wasn’t That Special, we interview six-year cast member Victoria Jackson, who has plenty to say about the behind-the-scenes drama during her time on the show.

Jackson talks about why, even 35 years later, Alec Baldwin can’t stop talking about her breasts. She offers an opinion on the famous Chris Farley Chippendale’s sketch, and she discusses her rivalries with fellow cast mates Jan Hooks and Nora Dunn. She explains her unique voice and tells the story of how she ended up on her back with her legs in the air in the infamous Il Cantore Italian restaurant sketch.

And in a new twist, we actually recorded video for this one! So if you want to watch the whole interview, you can do so here:

For more top-notch SNL history, please join us by subscribing either monthly, annually, or at our Executive Producer level, which brings all sorts of extra benefits!

Also, be sure to check out Victoria’s new album, When I Get to Nashville. It’s full of songs she’s written since moving to Nashville eleven years ago. The happy, the sad, and the hard to explain. You can buy the physical copy here or purchase for streaming on Amazon.

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If, as is commonly believed, five years is the expiration date for a star on Saturday Night Live, nobody told Dana Carvey and Phil Hartman. In Season 17, both cast members are running at full capacity, carrying the show along as the young players still find their footing on the show.

Of the kids on the show, Rob Schneider shows the most potential to be a…

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By the fall of 1990, the core cast of Saturday Night Live had spent four full seasons together, and clearly Executive Producer Lorne Michaels thought it was time for new blood.

Gone were Nora Dunn and Jon Lovitz, while Dana Carvey, Kevin Nealon, Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, Dennis Miller, Mike Myers, and Victoria Jackson were all back. But throughout the sea…

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Just before the 15th season of Saturday Night Live began, the show decided to pay tribute to itself with a special looking back at the 14 years it had been on the air. This was the first time SNL could pause and reflect, given that after both Season Five and Season Ten, the fate of the show was still up in the air. But after the legendary Season Fourteen, SNL was on firm footing and finally looked like it was going to be around for a while.

In this free episode, we look back not only at the Fifteenth Anniversary Special, but at the best sketches of the season the special covers. We play producer ourselves and create our own Fifteenth Birthday show - which sketches would we want to include to explain to someone that they should watch SNL?

So enjoy this surprise episode, and for more information on the first 15 years of the show, please subscribe to the podcast and enjoy all the perks of being a paid member. That includes getting to hear all the full podcasts from each season, and if you subscribe at our Executive Producer level, you get a number of weekly emails that share SNL clips and our behind-the-scenes discussions on sketches that ran during each season. (And you also get a free e-copy of Christian’s book.)

So join us now!

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There was only one question coming in to Season Fifteen of Saturday Night Live: Could the show maintain the high quality that made Season Fourteen the best year in the show’s history to date?

The answer? Not quite.

With the entire cast back this year, the show brought back favorite characters like Hans and Franz, the Church Lady, Wayne and Garth, and Diet…

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If the strike-shortened thirteenth season of Saturday Night Live was merely an appetizer, Season Fourteen is the full course, stuffed with classic sketches and top-flight performances.

The full cast is back this year, as well as almost the entire writing staff, which added names like Conan O’Brien, Bob Odenkirk, and Greg Daniels in Season Thirteen. Seaso…

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In previous seasons of Saturday Night Live, the female cast members have pointed out how much difficulty the male writers have had writing for them. In Season Seven, single-year cast member Christine Ebersole sang a whole song about it.

But in Season Thirteen, the gap between men’s roles and women’s roles is as stark as ever. The men get meaty, attention…

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In Season Eleven, Lorne Michaels tried something new with Saturday Night Live: he brought in a cast full of movie stars who hadn’t previously performed sketch comedy. And the results showed.

Michaels famously ended the season with a sketch that trapped the cast and writers in a burning room, with only Jon Lovitz escaping the fire. As Season Twelve begins, we find that Nora Dunn and Dennis Miller also escaped the flames of death.

The players that didn’t make it were replaced by a slew of new cast members that would go on to define the show for nearly a decade to come. New are San Francisco-based standup Dana Carvey, Groundlings improv veteran Phil Hartman, comedic actresses Jan Hooks and Victoria Jackson, and Los Angeles-based standup Kevin Nealon.

With new cast in tow, Season 12 hits the air as if it was shot out of a cannon, with at least three of the first 10 among some of the best the show has ever produced. The very first sketch of the first episode of the season features the Church Lady, who would go on to be one of the most iconic recurring characters in the show’s history. (And give birth to the name of this here podcast.)

Throughout the season, Carvey, Hartman and Hooks prove to be top-flight cast members. Jackson, historically undervalued because of her voice (which often kept her from doing celebrity impersonations), actually ends up being important to the show, as she demonstrated not only a skill for physical comedy (doing monologues while performing a handstand, crashing through windows, etc.), but musical ability, playing the ukelele in a song with Willie Nelson.

Throughout the season, Dennis Miller continues to reinvent Weekend Update, taking it to levels no previous host had been able to. The show brought back former cast members Bill Murray and Paul Shaffer to host, each helming underwhelming episodes. But shows hosted by Sigourney Weaver, William Shatner, Willie Nelson (and co-host Danny DeVito) all shone.

We discuss all these topics and much more on this week’s episode of “Wasn’t That Special.” Please subscribe and join us for a trip through every year of SNL. And consider joining at the Executive Producer level, where you get a whole load of extra commentary and clips that will help you become an SNL expert.

Get full access to Wasn't That Special: 50 Years of SNL at www.wasntthatspecial.com/subscribe

NOTE: You likely are seeing this email a second time. We are having Substack issues which necessitated a second post of this episode. Our apologies for clogging your inbox.

The eleventh season of Saturday Night Live started entirely from scratch, save the return of the show’s original creator, Lorne Michaels. With producer Dick Ebersol and big-name cast members like Billy Crystal, Martin Short, and Christopher Guest out the door, Michaels brought in a number of Hollywood stars with almost no sketch comedy experience. And their presence was met with a torrent of negative media criticism.

Anthony Michael Hall, Randy Quaid, Joan Cusack, and Robert Downey, Jr. (what ever happened to that guy?) stepped on to SNL from movie screens. Jon Lovitz came to the cast from the Groundlings in Los Angeles. Terry Sweeney was a veteran of New York City drag shows. And Danitra Vance was a cashier at Bloomingdale’s in New York when she found out she got the job.

But perhaps most impactful was the addition of Pittsburgh-area stand-up comic Dennis Miller to the Weekend Update desk. Miller immediately transformed the moribund news break into a lively, entertaining stand-up bit that would serve as the blueprint for generations of news-comedy television shows.

Wasn't That Special: 50 Years of SNL is a reader-supported podcast. To receive new shows and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The other cast members’ lack of sketch chops showed early and often. The very first show, hosted by Madonna, is widely regarded as one of the most tasteless, rotten episodes aired in SNL history, and the critics turned against the show en masse. By the middle of the season, the show was effectively down to four main players - Lovitz, Quaid, Dunn, and Cusack - leading the show to start being in dual hosts, in order to beef up the talent.

Despite the show’s struggles, there are occasional pinholes of light. This is the season Tom Hanks first hosted the show, and demonstrated why he may be the best host in the show’s history. Jon Lovitz featured two characters (Master Thespian and Pathological Liar Tommy Flanagan) he had brought from The Groundlings, and within weeks Americans across the country were yelling “acting!” and “that’s the ticket!”

In fact, the show was so underwhelming for most of the season, Michaels ended the season with a sketch in which the entire cast is trapped in a room that is on fire. (He pulls Lovitz, by then the star of the show, out of the room, but leaves the rest of the cast.) The sketch is meant to be a cliffhanger; for viewers, it was more likely cathartic.

We discuss all these topics and much more on this week’s episode of “Wasn’t That Special.” Please subscribe and join us for a trip through every year of SNL. Listening to the podcast will make you an SNL expert, and most likely make you twice as attractive…that’s the ticket!

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wasntthatspecial.com/subscribe

The eleventh season of Saturday Night Live started entirely from scratch, save the return of the show’s original creator, Lorne Michaels. With producer Dick Ebersol and big-name cast members like Billy Crystal, Martin Short, and Christopher Guest out the door, Michaels brought in a number of Hollywood stars with almost no sketch comedy experience. And their presence was met with a torrent of negative media criticism.

Anthony Michael Hall, Randy Quaid, Joan Cusack, and Robert Downey, Jr. (what ever happened to that guy?) stepped on to SNL from movie screens. Jon Lovitz came to the cast from the Groundlings in Los Angeles. Terry Sweeney was a veteran of New York City drag shows. And Danitra Vance was a cashier at Bloomingdale’s in New York when she found out she got the job.

But perhaps most impactful was the addition of Pittsburgh-area stand-up comic Dennis Miller to the Weekend Update desk. Miller immediately transformed the moribund news break into a lively, entertaining stand-up bit that would serve as the blueprint for generations of news-comedy television shows.

The other cast members’ lack of sketch chops showed early and often. The very first show, hosted by Madonna, is widely regarded as one of the most tastless, rotten episodes aired in SNL history, and the critics turned against the show en masse. By the middle of the season, the show was effectively down to four main players - Lovitz, Quaid, Dunn, and Cusack - leading the show to start being in dual hosts, in order to beef up the talent.

Despite the show’s struggles, there are occasional pinholes of light. This is the season Tom Hanks first hosted the show, and demonstrated why he may be the best host in the show’s history. Jon Lovitz featured two characters (Master Thespian and Pathalogical Liar Tommy Flanagan) he had brought from The Groundlings, and within weeks Americans across the country were yelling “acting!” and “that’s the ticket!”

In fact, the show was so underwhelming for most of the season, Michaels ended the season with a sketch in which the entire cast is trapped in a room that is on fire. (He pulls Lovitz, by then the star of the show, out of the room, but leaves the rest of the cast.) The sketch is meant to be a cliffhanger; for viewers, it was more likely cathartic.

We discuss all these topics and much more on this week’s episode of “Wasn’t That Special.” Please subscribe and join us for a trip through every year of SNL. Listening to the podcast will make you an SNL expert, and most likely make you twice as attractive…that’s the ticket!

Get full access to Wasn't That Special: 50 Years of SNL at www.wasntthatspecial.com/subscribe