Five minutes. That’s how long Saturday Night Live auditions last.
The high-stakes audition process for the sketch show, which celebrates its 50th anniversary on Feb. 16, is notorious in its own right. Comedians and writers who want to make it on SNL perform their best bits, characters, and impressions for a chance at stardom.
In an episode of the four-part docuseries SNL 50: Beyond Saturday Night, out now on Peacock, longtime SNL producers lift the curtain on the audition process. The episode, “Five Minutes,” features SNL alums watching their audition tapes and reflecting on what it was like to prepare for that all-important moment.
We see Tracy Morgan laugh hysterically while watching his tape, in which he pretended to be a little boy named Biscuit reading a Christmas poem while decked out in a rainbow beanie hat with a propeller on top. Bobby Moynihan is in disbelief watching his younger self in a rugby polo shirt and jeans slapping his booty repeatedly. Bowen Yang literally screams when he sees footage of his younger self. Part of his audition was meta; he pretended to be an actor auditioning to be the choking victim on posters all over restaurants.
Celebrity impersonations—a fixture of SNL—work when they bring something unexpected to the table, producer Lindsay Shookus explains in SNL 50. For example, Bill Hader pretended to be Al Pacino losing his mind over a cantaloupe. Kate McKinnon pretended to be Penelope Cruz advertising a L’Oréal moisturizer while moving seductively around a chair. And Kenan Thompson had won over producer Michael Shoemaker with his Bill Cosby impersonation and the shrill way he produced the name of Cosby’s wife Camille.
Many bits that comedians used in their auditions have ended up as iconic Saturday Night Live sketches, from Kristen Wiig’s overzealous Target clerk to Ana Gasteyer’s smooth operator voice, which landed her a role as a radio host interviewing Alec Baldwin about his famous Schweddy Balls recipe.
Hands-down, the craziest audition is the one in which Henry Zebrowski showed up completely naked, holding his genitals in his hands. He did not get the role, but throughout his career, he has had many TV and movie roles.
The producers give some insight into how the process works, revealing that certain cast members were a shoe-in even before they got to the audition. With Amy Poehler, producer Marci Klein says in the series, “We knew we were hiring her before she did this [audition], this was more like formality.” Aspiring cast members were likely to land an audition through word-of-mouth. According to “Five Minutes,” showrunner Lorne Michaels liked getting recommendations from cast members, writers, and other celebrities. Andy Samberg got on the show because Jimmy Fallon recommended him. Gwenyth Paltrow called in to recommend Maya Rudolph.
Now-famous comedians who auditioned for the show, but did not make the cut, like Jennifer Coolidge, Kevin Hart, and Mindy Kaling, are also featured. Stephen Colbert gets a cathartic release watching his apparently unsuccessful audition tape, shouting at one point, “It doesn’t matter I wasn’t on Saturday Night Live!”
Successful auditions didn’t always mean you’d be in front of the camera. Some comedians who auditioned for the show were hired on as producers and writers, as a way to keep them in SNL’s talent network, according to the doc. John Mulaney and Jason Sudeikis originally auditioned for cast roles, but were hired as writers (Sudeikis later appeared as a cast member for almost 10 years).
Some of the SNL cast members become emotional watching their audition tapes. Heidi Gardner asks, “Did other people cry?” She starts to cry after seeing her tape, explaining, “I was a little scared that I would just be a little too critical, and there are things I think I could have done better, but I cannot believe I did that. Just as far as like, that’s a lot of pressure.”
With tears in his eyes, Moynihan recalls how Seth Meyers congratulated him on his successful SNL audition, and said he’ll be talking about what it’s like to be a SNL cast member for the rest of his life. “It’s completely true. It’s the first thing that comes up at every dinner. It was everything. And it still is. I loved that show. I was on it.” But comedians can’t get sentimental for long without cracking a joke somewhere. After wiping more tears from his eyes and putting his glasses back on, he says, totally deadpan, “I also murdered someone this morning. I feel terrible about it.”
