Girl Walks Into a Bar (6 page)

I felt it could not have gone any better. Whether or not they picked me, at least I knew I had done my best. And … I had instant success and was off on my path to the top like the rising star that I was? Nope. Ol’ Two-Time Dratch strikes again! I wasn’t hired. That year they hired Jimmy Fallon, Horatio Sanz, and Chris Parnell. They told me maybe next year they’d be hiring women, but I let go of the dream, with a genuinely OK feeling about it.

A year later, I did get to audition again. You don’t want to go in and do the same stuff you did the year before. I had already
used up my best stuff in the previous audition, so now I had to break out “second string” characters. This time I didn’t feel quite as good about it. I called up my mom and told her I didn’t think I got it. They said they’d let me know by August 15, but I wasn’t holding my breath. August 15 came and went without a phone call, and I wasn’t too surprised.

Two weeks later, I got a message on my answering machine. (This was 1999, back in the days of answering machines.) “Lorne wants to meet with you in NYC.” I flew to New York, sat on the couch outside his office for a few hours, and then had a ten-minute chat with Lorne.

The meeting wasn’t any sort of interview situation like “So, what do you hope to bring to the job?” I’m not really sure what we talked about. I remember him telling me that when Candice Bergen would host, Jane Curtin might have less to do that week. It was almost like he was telling me what it would be like if I got to join the cast. And I’ve heard rumor he has those meetings to make sure you aren’t crazy.

My meeting with Lorne in his office ended with him telling me he’d let me know about the job in a week. A week passed. Oh yes, I was counting! And this was the last possible day of “the week.” I was walking around with my brand-new cell phone every second of the day (again, 1999, we had all just switched from pagers). There I was, in the shower, the bathroom, Pilates class with my trusty phone. No call. Finally, at six
P.M.
Los Angeles time—I get THE CALL! “We have Lorne Michaels for you,” says a voice on the phone. And there he was.

“Hello, Rachel.”

“Hi!”

“I’m up here in Toronto, but someone from NBC will be calling to set up the deal.”

“WHAT DOES THAT MEAN!!!?” I’m thinking.

“Um … does that mean I got the job?”

Long pause, which probably was actually two seconds.

“Yes.”

“Oh! Thank you.” (Screaming inside!) “Thank you so much!”

Hang up phone. Scream and jump around. Call parents. Call friends. Scream and jump around some more. Cut to third-grade Rachel getting the news. She screams and jumps around too.

It was ten years
almost to the day since I had arrived in Chicago, covered in flour.

Dreams Do Come True!

(And May Be Accompanied by Debilitating Psychological Torture)

You could probably
tell I was the new girl by my unbridled excitement and my unkempt eyebrows. I hadn’t touched them before getting hired for
SNL.
What did I know of the importance of brow-shaping to being a lady? At
SNL
I was immediately whisked into a world of excitement and GLAMOUR! I got my photo taken in the studio for the opening credits, and if you recall, David Motherf’ing Bowie was rehearsing
with his band and singing “Rebel Rebel.” RIGHT THERE! WHILE I WAS GETTING MY PICTURE TAKEN TO BE ON
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE
!! To this day, I can’t hear the song “Rebel Rebel” without thinking of the fact that whatever else happens in life, my gazillion-to-one dream came true.

SNL
gives you a month to find your own apartment, so at first I was staying in the Doubletree Suites in Times Square. Times Square is any native New Yorker’s most avoided part of the city because of the crowds and the tourists, but of course I didn’t mind. I felt like (please say in Liza Minnelli voice) “I’m in New York City! The lights! The crowds! I’m livin’ the dream!” Each day I would walk to 30 Rockefeller Plaza, having no idea where the hell I was in the city. I had no orientation of east and west, north and south. I just knew to turn right out of the hotel, and right on Forty-Ninth Street. Oh yes, I was gritty. It was just like Patti Smith.

My first event there was the twenty-fifth anniversary show, and as a new cast member, I would get to sit in the audience. I would be surrounded by every major person who had hosted the show, plus every big musical guest. Any comedy idol I could think of—Steve Martin, Bob Newhart, Bill Murray—was there buzzing around. When I arrived, a producer said, “Where’ve you been? You have to get in hair and makeup!” What? But I was merely there to sit in the audience! No matter. They had a dress for me to wear, and presented me to Michaelanthony (yes, that is one word), the hairstylist, who gave me a crazy fun ’do. And while I was sitting in the makeup chair, there in the same little room were Lily Tomlin, Dan Aykroyd, and Elvis Costello. This was in-sane.

And then, after that crazy intro to the dream job, here it
was: the very first episode of the season and my national television debut on
Saturday Night Live
! Jerry Seinfeld was the host. I was going to be playing a child beauty pageant contestant on “Weekend Update.” The character was sort of on the same family tree as the child star I had used for my audition. My mom came down to watch the show in the live audience. And the biggest thrill of all—Don Pardo was going to say my name. I was ready for The! Most! Thrilling! Moment! Of! My! Life!

The! Most! Thrilling! Moment! Of! My! Life! … was going to have to wait. After dress rehearsal, one of the producers came into my dressing room and informed me that my piece was cut. My pink-and-white pageant dress hung on the hook in my dressing room to punctuate the moment, and to mock me. In my mind, the piece had gone well, but in this whole new world, what did I know? I had my first intro to the long tradition of having to answer everyone-you-know’s phone calls, explaining why you didn’t appear on the show—in this instance, on the night of my big debut. I didn’t know to give them the warning that it might not happen. I dusted myself off and was ready for Week Two.

Week Two! Hosted by Heather Graham! Musical guest Marc Anthony. Another scene! … Cut after dress.

Week Three … Hosted by Norm MacDonald! Musical guests Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg! And still waiting for The! Most! Thrilling! Moment! Of! My! Life!

See, what I didn’t realize is that Lorne is very careful about your first appearance on the show. He wants you to really knock it out of the park and do something that will wow the
audience, not come on with a piece that just goes OK. My child beauty pageant star did just adequately—it didn’t
kill
. Finally, on that third show, I got to appear as Calista Flockhart, making the same face I had made screwing around in my living room, only now on national TV. I understood why Lorne made me wait for my debut—I would end up doing that impression many times on the show, and I even got a
Cheers
in
TV Guide
for that first episode. Lorne puts a lot of thought into the show and he is very hands-on with his decisions. He didn’t create the show only to delegate and just sit up in some golden tower (although he may well own a golden tower as one of his vacation homes).

I was the only
new cast member the season I was hired, and as you can gather, the powers that be don’t give you a handbook telling you, “Oh, welcome aboard and here’s how everything works!” You are just thrown into the pool—sink or swim. So I will tell you now. This way, if you are ever on
SNL
, you will be prepared. Here it is, reader:

YOUR UNOFFICIAL GUIDE TO BEING ON
SNL
.

T
HE FIRST STEP is getting your scene on the show. This occurs at the read-through on Wednesday afternoon. You’ve had virtually no sleep, for you have been up the entire previous night writing. So on Wednesday, the whole cast and the host and Lorne are seated around a giant table, and you all read through or, I should say, perform there at the table, all of the scenes that have been submitted that week. Usually, that’s about forty scenes. Virtually every employee of the show is in the room—people from costumes, sets, hair, sound—everyone crammed into the room to hear what possible scenes they may be working on that week. Your scene is read. Sometimes it gets big laughs! Yay! Sometimes it tanks and gets silence. Boooo! By the end of the whole process, the bigwigs—that is, Lorne, a few of the producers, the head writers, and the host—all go behind closed doors and pick which scenes will be in for the week. You hang out in the offices, joke around with cast mates, or drink some wine that has been pilfered from a cabinet somewhere. A few hours later, someone says, “The picks are in!” and you go look at a list, much as you would if you were auditioning for the high school play, to see if your scene has been circled. Sometimes your scene that killed at the table is in! Yay! Sometimes, to your utter dismay, your scene that killed is not in, for reasons that you will never know, so you learn to not even bother asking what went on behind that Great Closed Door. Maybe the male host really wanted to play a woman, so he picked that Hooters scene instead. But that is just your speculation. Often a scene that you found not funny at all is in. Do not question. Someone probably thinks the same about your scene when it gets in. It is all subjective and will make you insane. But this week … your scene is in! Yay! Tell all your friends! WAIT!! You soon learn. DON’T TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS!

There is still a gauntlet to run before you are on TV. You see, Lorne and the producers pick a few more scenes for the dress rehearsal than will make it to the live show. There is a dress rehearsal at eight P.M. on Saturday in front of a live audience, and judging from how your scene goes there, it could still be cut before air. After the dress rehearsal, everyone crams into Lorne’s office at about 10:30 P.M. to sit on the floor or a couch arm, and up on a bulletin board the list of scenes that are in is on one side, and the scenes that were cut are on the other side … the BAD side!! Some weeks, you are all over the show before dress rehearsal and you walk in to see your three scenes are all on the BAD side of the board, so you end up on the bench that week. But lucky for you, this week, your scene is still in! Yay! Tell all your friends! WAIT!! DON’T TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS!

You see, gentle reader, your scene is at the end of the show. It’s the last scene of the night. Because the show is live, the timing is only an estimate. Quite often, the last scene of the show is cut for time. It’s all very frenetic when you find this out. There you are in your chicken suit, excited to do your big chicken scene, and someone runs through the hallway breathlessly saying, “THE CHICKEN SCENE IS CUT!” You dejectedly take off your chicken head. But you still say good nights with your chicken body on, ’cause darn it, someone’s going to see and think, “Hey! What’s that chicken costume? Oh darn it, that looks really funny! I bet we missed out on a really funny scene there!”

After the show on Saturday night, each cast member gets a limo and you can pile your friends or out-of-town visitors in and head to the party. The parties don’t usually get too crazy—they are held in various restaurants around the city, and people sit at the tables with their visitors. The parties serve as the big sigh of relief after all the work that week. Outsiders picture the parties as these debauched crazy affairs with comedians hanging off the chandeliers. That may have been true in the old days, but in my time, looking around the room, you might think the drug of choice was calamari.

As the party winds down for the evening, you ask your friends, “Are you going to the after-after?” The after-after-parties go from around four A.M. until the sun is up, and are held in random dive bars throughout the city. They are a bit more raucous than the after-parties, only because you aren’t seated at tables; sometimes there is dancing, and by that hour, people have consumed more alcohol. (My first few years there, I always went to both parties and would stumble home at eight in the morning, sometimes with show makeup still on my face and wig glue still crusted near my ears. Perhaps the most memorable after-after-party was thrown by Tracy Morgan, waaay down at the bottom of Manhattan. We all piled into our cars to go to parts unknown and ended up at a modern apartment building in an area of town I didn’t even know existed. Upon entering, we found that interspersed through this party, to serve up cocktails or possibly sexual favors, were stripper ladies who were all of a very specific type. I think whoever organized the party—maybe one of Tracy’s cronies?—must have been into short, like five feet tall, Latina ladies of square and stocky build. Each and every lady had the look of an ancient Mayan crammed into black fishnets and garter belts, with red headband tiaras on their heads for extra sexiness. I think I stayed at that party about fifteen minutes, and it served as a tipping point—perhaps I had reached an age when I didn’t have to go to
every
after-after-party).