“The Days Are Long and the Years Are Short”
—Stay-at-Home Moms and Sex Workers
Now that we’ve finished season 5, it’s time to start shopping for parachutes again. Rob Reiner was a guest on the show this year, and he went out of his way to tell us all to appreciate this job. Jobs like this are special and they don’t last forever. No need to remind me, Michael Stivic. I have seen my future, and it is a weight-loss game show on Lifetime. And I don’t even win.
Here are answers to some FAQ about 30 Rock:
Q: Is Alec Baldwin really leaving show business?
A: I don’t know, but we do have a contingency plan: a slightly out of focus Billy Baldwin.
Q: Is Tracy Morgan as wild and crazy as his character?
A: There’s only one way for you to find out. Drive across country with him in a Prius.
Q: Will Jack and Liz ever “hook up”?
A: In spite of their “Sam and Diane” sparring, their relationship will remain more like “Norm and Cliff”—making out while drunk and then denying it.
Q: When is it on, again?
A: Thursdays at either 10:00 or 8:30 or… you know what? Just DVR it.
Q: Where did you find Grizz and Dotcom?
A: Grizz and Dotcom were born adorable and fully clothed and found nestled in a field. They were the inspiration for the Cabbage Patch dolls and the Cabbage Patch dance.
Q: When are we gonna see more of Pete and the writers?
A: Season 9.
Q: Has Tracy Morgan ever French-kissed an NBC executive?
A: Yes, but only at an official NBC event, and only against her will.
Q: Is Jack McBrayer really like his character?
A: No, Jack’s character is a simple farm boy from Stone Mountain, Georgia. Jack himself would be useless on a farm, and he’s from the bank-robbery and teen-sex-scandal metropolis of Conyers, Georgia.
Q: How come Liz Lemon talks so much about food and overeating but she’s not fat?
A: The character Liz Lemon has a rare condition called “orophasmia,” where everything she eats immediately falls out her bottom like a ghost. This was established in episode 219, “The One About Liz’s Orophasmia,” in the roller-coaster scene with Emmy-nominated guest star Marisa Tomei.
Q: Is 30 Rock the most racist show on television?
A: No, in my opinion it’s NFL football. Why do they portray all those guys as murderers and rapists?
Q: How many janitors work at TGS, the fictional show within the show?
A: We have established eight distinct janitorial characters. Joe, Subhas, Old Janitor, Rolly, Khonani, Euzebia, Rosa, and Jadwiga. Action figures are in the works.
Sarah, Oprah, and Captain Hook, or How to Succeed by Sort of Looking Like Someone
I would never have made it into the cast of Saturday Night Live if I’d had to go about it in the regular way. When people audition for the show, they have to stand on the historic SNL home base stage and try to get a laugh from the four or five stone-cold strangers watching them. They have to demonstrate their funny characters and voices, of which I have none. My own child could tell you that my “funny voices” are completely derivative and my Mr. Smee impression sounds nothing like the guy in the movie.
I ended up on TV because Lorne Michaels likes to promote from within. When he had to choose who would replace David Letterman in Late Night on NBC, he picked unknown former SNL writer Conan O’Brien. When it was time to pick new anchors for Weekend Update in 1999, he did a nationwide talent search that went all the way across the hall. He let one of the head writers of the show—me—do a screen test with cast member Jimmy Fallon. By the time I tested for the show, I had already worked there for three years. I wasn’t intimidated by anyone in the room, and I already had a day job at the show to fall back on. I didn’t have to do characters, just read jokes without messing up.
The timing of the Weekend Update turnover was, at that point in my life, the luckiest, craziest thing that had ever happened to me.
In rehearsing for the screen test, I realized that I couldn’t see the cue cards. I’ve worn glasses to see far away since I was twenty-one, but I only need them for a few activities, like going to the movies, finding Orion’s belt, and reading cue cards. So I went to the doctor and got my first pair of contact lenses. The day of the screen test I spent about twenty-five minutes nervously trying to get the lenses onto my eyeballs. Right up until camera time, I was sweaty and green from having to touch my own eyeballs like that. If you’ve never had to do it, I’d say it’s not quite as quease-making as when you lose your tampon string, but equally queasish to a self–breast exam. If you are male, I would liken it to touching your own eyeball, and thank you for buying this book.
Jimmy and I did a screen test, as did a bunch of other people in the cast and several comics from the outside world. Because Jimmy was a star and Lorne felt that I would make sure the writing of the segment got done, Jimmy and I got the job.
We did another camera test for set and lighting. Less than eager to touch my own eyeballs again, I just wore my glasses the second time around. After the test, the great comedy writer and chronicler of human perversions T. Sean Shannon came up to me and said in his Texas drawl, “You should leave them glasses on, sister.” And so, a commonplace librarian fetish was embraced for profit.
Once I was hired to do Update, every now and then the writers would put me in a sketch. This usually happened only if all the other women were already in the sketch and they had run out of bodies.
But they didn’t use me much, because I could never really look like anybody else. Molly Shannon has a great face for wigs. Her features are delicate and symmetrical, and her coloring is neutral enough that she can play a blond Courtney Love or raven-haired Monica Lewinsky and you buy it. Maya Rudolph’s face can change from Donatella Versace to Beyoncé in a minute and seventeen seconds. I always just look like me, in a wig. (See below pictures of me not resembling Dina Lohan, Janice Dickinson, or Barbara Pierce Bush.)
The closest I ever came to looking like anyone else was when they tried to dress me up like a bearded lady from the circus and I looked just like my brother. It has something to do with the fact that my eyes and eyebrows are very dark but my skin is very pale and my nose is kind of long. I was absolutely useless when it came to being a look-alike.
So You Can Imagine My Surprise…
So you can imagine my surprise on August 29, 2008, when my husband called me into the room to watch CNN. John McCain had selected first-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, and two things were obvious right away. One, this was a craven attempt to lure Hillary voters away from Obama, and two—“She kind of looks like you,” my husband said. I scoffed. It was just that she had brown hair and glasses. But the e-mails started coming, from friends and cousins and coworkers. People seemed to think we really looked alike. The most powerful minds in the world—cable news anchors and Internet users—started speculating as to whether I would play her on Saturday Night Live.
We had already done two full seasons of 30 Rock and were just beginning to shoot season 3. If I had been wondering whether people were aware of the new show, the answer was now clear; they were not. No one had even noticed that I didn’t work at Saturday Night anymore. Also, no one seemed to remember that when I did work there, I only did the news. They didn’t care. They were in a blind frenzy. “Brown hair! Glasses!”
In a Shocking Turn of Events…
In a shocking turn of events, Oprah Winfrey had expressed the slightest polite interest in being on 30 Rock. Desperate to find a larger audience, we jumped at this chance like meth heads over a cough syrup counter. Robert Carlock wrote a hilarious script where Liz Lemon meets Oprah on a plane. (You can buy it on iTunes!) We sent the script to some women at Harpo, who told us that Oprah liked it and they were sure she would do it. We were ecstatic. As the summer wore on, however, it became clear that Oprah had not actually seen the script. In late August, Oprah’s chief of staff
(I am not joking) had called to say that Oprah was really sorry but she would not be able to do the show. This was planned as our second episode of the season, and Oprah was irreplaceable in it. We had already shot half the episode. If this fell apart now, it would cost the show hundreds of thousands of dollars. I had the nerve-racking task of getting on the phone with Ms. Winfrey and trying to talk her into it. I am terribly, terribly suited for such jobs. I’m shy and have no salesmanship—I am actually able to convey sweaty palms over the phone. I didn’t try to sell Ms. Winfrey on the comedy of the episode; instead I appealed to her knowledge of television schedules and how royally cornholed we’d be if she declined. She listened, because she is smart and generous. She agreed to let us do a rewrite of the script and consider it, but I knew that until that Oprah footage was “in the can,” I would carry around a very specific form of physical anxiety that feels kind of like my heart shrinking up like a raisin.
Meanwhile, Across Town…
Meanwhile, across town, the staff of Saturday Night Live was preparing to start their season early, on September 13, to cover this very important national election. The show is always exciting during election years and has proven its political relevance time and time again over its thirty-five-year run. (I have to include sentences like that because I’m trying to get college credit for this.) On September 3, 2008, then governor Palin accepted the vice presidential nomination. Around this same time, Oprah formally agreed to be on 30 Rock, and it was determined that my daughter’s third-birthday party would have a Peter Pan theme. Each of these events was equally important in my life.
Lorne and I discussed the overwhelming public opinion (hyperbole) that I should play Governor Palin. Apparently, that morning both Lorne’s doorman and Robert De Niro had stopped him to say how uncanny the resemblance was. Did we dare disappoint Frank the Doorman and Robert De Niro?
Lorne and I shared the same hesitation: If everyone in the world had the same casting idea, it couldn’t possibly be a good idea, right? When you work at SNL, people come up to you all the time and say stuff like “You know what you should do? A skit about my brother-in-law,” or “You should do a skit where Tiger Woods and Obama are gay for each other.” Or “That show hasn’t been good since the seventies.” People always have lots of opinions about the show and they’re never right, so why would they be right now?
But Lorne is also an old-school producer, and somewhere deep down I think he knew that if he cast me in the part “by popular demand,” even if I sucked, it might be a good rating. A good rating is a good rating, even if people tune in just to be mad about how much it sucked.
We decided not to decide. This is another technique I’d learned from Lorne. Sometimes if you have a difficult decision to make, just stall until the answer presents itself.
Back at 30 Rock…
Back at 30 Rock we scheduled our shooting day with Miss Oprah Winfrey. She generously offered to fly in on Saturday, September 13, to pick up her scenes. This was perfect. I could safely plan my daughter’s party for Sunday the 14th. The only remaining problem was that I could not find Peter Pan plates or cups. You can find Tinkerbell or Captain Hook, but no Peter Pan. Was Disney in some kind of legal conflict with the J. M. Barrie estate? There was no time to get involved in that! I had less than a week! Captain Hook cups mixed with Tinkerbell plates would have to suffice.
It was four days until the season premiere of SNL and still no decision from Lorne. I was walking around the 30 Rock offices telling everyone that I couldn’t possibly play Palin—I was too busy and I didn’t do impressions and it’s important to say no sometimes and I couldn’t possibly commit to it—but in the back of my head, I was very aware that no one had actually asked me to do it. “Has he called you yet? Has he called you yet?” my friends were asking. Nope. I slumped against my locker and twirled my ponytail.
I had arrogantly thought it was all about me and whether I felt like doing it, but of course it was Lorne’s decision to make and not mine. It’s his show.
Still trying to control the situation, I called Lorne’s office on Wednesday evening after their read-through and left a message to say I didn’t want to play Palin, should it come up. My call was not returned.
On Wednesday night, Alice and I drew a picture of Peter Pan to hang up at the party. I explained to her the apparent licensing problem with the plates. She was understanding and suggested we relax by pretending to be Wendy and a mermaid for the next sixty-five minutes.
On Thursday, Oprah’s office checked in to say that she had heard I might be doing Saturday Night Live that Saturday and would I rather reschedule her shoot? No, no, no! Get the “O” in the can, for the sake of my heart raisin.
Thursday morning I checked the status of my Amazon.com order. The birthday present I had ordered was not here yet. I also started peeking at YouTube clips of Sarah Palin. How hard could that voice be?
On Thursday evening, Lorne called to say that Seth Meyers had written a piece and I should come over late Friday evening and rehearse it with Amy and if it didn’t feel right, someone else would do it.
I rambled through my concerns. Kristen Wiig would be better at it. (Lorne agreed.) I felt that whatever I appeared in, people would assume that I wrote it and that it was expressing my personal opinions. These were delusions of grandeur, of course; remember, no one even noticed that I had quit.
Regardless, I didn’t want to be a stock character that any writer on the staff could make use of. I didn’t want, for example, to play Sarah Palin in a sketch about how Hillary Clinton was a jealous dyke or something.
Also, I was skittish to do political comedy after getting myself into trouble a few months before.
My Mouth Goes into Politics. The Rest of Me Is Forced to Follow.
After the Writers’ Guild of America Strike that Changed the World in 2008, I was asked to host the first Saturday Night Live back on the air. Finally, the world would see my full range of comedy characters—from grouchy librarian to Russian librarian.
Seth and Amy asked if I wanted to come on Weekend Update to do a “Woman News” segment.
The piece the Update writers and I threw together was meant to be about the way Hillary Clinton was being treated and perceived during the campaign. It was meant to point out that America seemed more comfortable with a male minority candidate than a white female candidate. It was meant to discuss (in joke form) that people didn’t take to Hillary because of this vague feeling that she was kind of a bitch and how unfair that was. It was meant to be about gender politics, not actual politics.
What came out was an overt Hillary Clinton endorsement.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like Mrs. Clinton as a candidate; it’s just that Weekend Update features are written so hastily. If you’re hosting, you don’t even start writing them until Saturday afternoon. It’s no surprise that they can come out sloppy and strident. I was in the host’s dressing room between dress rehearsal and air—feeling like Stallone, but without the cigar or the nice teeth. I just wanted the show to be good. I needed a punchier ending to the Hillary Clinton Update piece, and my friend and makeup artist Richard Dean suggested “Bitch is the new black.” It made sense in the context of the piece and was certainly punchy. Also, it was about 11:10 P.M., so yeah, let’s go with that.
I would have chosen to stop short of being overtly political if I’d had more time to smooth it out, because one: I think it’s more powerful for comedians and news anchors to be impartial, and two: I am a coward.
The next day Obama supporters on the Huffington Post were outraged. Former president Clinton called me at home to thank me. Mrs. Clinton called later that same day to thank me, proving that Bill is just a tiny bit better at the flash-charm-handshake part of politics.
When I told my mom that former president Clinton told me I “did a great thing for my country” in defending Mrs. Clinton like that, she made a barfing sound. Did I mention that my parents are Republicans?
Friday came, and I know what you’re
wondering—yes, the Imaginext pirate ship and sea monster I had ordered did arrive, and I wrapped them in my dressing room between setups. I shot for twelve hours at the fake 30 Rock, then, after inspecting the cleanliness of Oprah’s airplane set and dressing room for the next morning,* I headed over to the real 30 Rock at about ten P.M. to rehearse with Amy Poehler. I took comfort knowing that Amy could carry the sketch if I stunk it up, because she’s such a skilled and generous performer. I mean, she’s no Kattan in a dress, but considering the Darwinian limitations on women in comedy, she does very well for herself.
We went out on the studio floor in front of the crew, and I tentatively tried out my half-baked impression. Not the worst. Significant room for improvement.
Because Seth and I had written for real impressionists like Darrell Hammond over the years, we knew there were certain tricks we could employ. Whatever sounds are helpful to the impression, you use as many of them as possible in the writing. For Palin it was a lot of “hard R’s.” Words like “reporters and commentators.” Words you can’t say, you avoid. For example, I’ve never been able to figure out how she says “Todd.” Amy added jokes. I added some jokes. The whole process was pleasant and collaborative and easy.