Generally with comedy, you simply needed to be there. Authentic Saturday Night time Reside solid member Jane Curtin revealed that she lately tried rewatching the primary few seasons of the primetime sketch present, solely to seek out that present was quite a bit worse than she remembered. The truth is, she mentioned, it was “horrible.”
Curtin made a reputation for herself as one of many authentic solid members of Lorne Michaels’s SNL, starring as a Not Prepared for Primetime participant alongside different future comedy greats like Gilda Radnor, Dan Akroyd, John Belushi, and Chevy Chase. In an interview with Folks, Curtin shared that she revisited their early work on Saturday Night time Reside after being despatched a compilation video. “We have been out visiting her daughter one Christmas, and her husband mentioned, ‘Have you ever ever watched any of those?’ And I mentioned, ‘God, I have not seen them in a very long time.’”
The funny-woman and her household gathered across the tv to look at an episode of the collection. “I had that form of anticipatory, open-mouth grin that folks have once they’re ready for one thing to occur, that they know goes to be actually nice,” she mentioned. That grin, nevertheless, quickly was a frown. “And… it by no means occurred. It wasn’t humorous. Not one factor was humorous. There was not one utterance of amusing or a giggle.”
Curtin remained on Saturday Night time Reside for 5 seasons, leaving in 1980. She was additionally the present’s first feminine “Weekend Replace” host on. However whereas the punchlines did not land when Curtin rewatched the collection together with her household, she advised Folks she believed early SNL was “simply a kind of ‘you needed to be there within the second’ issues.”
“That is what occurs with stay TV, and with topical TV,” she defined. “It will get dated after some time. Bear in mind, this was nearly 50 years in the past.”
Despite the fact that early SNL was of a unique period, nevertheless, Curtin reiterated that she was lower than impressed with the present’s ultimate product. “After we rewatched, I used to be like, ‘That actually wasn’t an excellent present. It was horrible.’”
Curtin did not discover each sketch to be horrible. “The Bassomatic, I nonetheless suppose it’s humorous,” she mentioned, referring to an notorious Akroyd sketch. She additionally name-checked three early hosts—Richard Benjamin, Buck Henry, and Steve Martin—for actually getting the vibe of the collection. “Initially, you needed to be actually good to be a very good host, and those who stored coming again bought the concept of it and so they bought the enjoyable of it,” she mentioned. Different hosts weren’t such a terrific match for the collection. “I bear in mind Walter Matthau— he simply got here from a really totally different place,” mentioned Curtin of the Oscar-winning actor. “We have been in rehearsals, two days out from the stay present, and he mentioned, ‘Why is not anybody having enjoyable round right here?!’ There was a self-discipline to it — despite the fact that it regarded like chaos.”
