Bill Hader's Comedy 'Frustrated' Lorne Michaels On 'SNL'

Saturday Night Live is broad comedy personified. They need to appeal to all four quadrants, so they make jokes that (most) people will get. That’s hard! Not only do they have to widen their appeal, but they also don’t have the “luxury” of being on five nights a week like most late-night shows. So, they must be topical at the end of the week when you’ve likely already heard or read every jokey take on something out there. But not every sketch on SNL is meant for everyone.

It’s not like SNL hasn’t employed comics with bizarre senses of humor. Hell, the show began with people like Michael O’Donoghue on the staff. SNL is plenty capable of doing some weird s***. Those sketches are often buried at the end of the show. You can’t lead with the oddball stuff at 11:30 PM (anymore, at least). You have to do your cold opens that let everyone know how politically f***ed we are. Then, you move on to some recurring sketches or things that are surefire hits. That’s what Lorne wants, according to Conan O’Brien.

O’Brien was a writer on Saturday Night Live in the late ’80s, and recently sat down with fellow former SNL member Bill Hader and Lorne’s comedic preferences came up. “Lorne loves a big—he likes a home run hitter. He likes someone who’s gonna go out there, like, ‘Gimme your church lady. Gimme the character that everyone just can’t wait to see,’ softball down the middle,” O’Brien noted. “And I know that you guys loved coming up with stuff that would kind of… The one I’m thinking of is, you were doing a Judd Hirsch impression on the show.”

O’Brien was referencing Hader and fellow SNL writer John Mulaney. The duo has a love of old, specific Hollywood, which has permeated their comedic endeavors since leaving the show. It didn’t go over as well when they were there… or when they came back. Hader recalled returning to the show and being shut down by Writer/Producer Steve Higgins. “When I came back to host, Steve Higgins said out of the gate, he goes, ‘All right, none of that sandwich in a briefcase s*** that you and Mulaney like so much,’” Hader explained.

To be fair, it wasn’t just Higgins and Michaels who didn’t love Hader’s ideas. Hader reminisced about a table read that went particularly poorly, where he and Mulaney pitched a cop show sketch. “It was a cop show, a ’70s cop show called Kanish. And the host was Kanish, and then we basically just did that thing we ripped off from the Police Squad!… where we all froze and we pretended to be frozen. And someone came in. The joke was that they would freeze too early,” he told Conan. Hader then recognized that no one on O’Brien’s podcast got the joke either, noting, “And it played like this.” Hader said he and Mulaney could not stop laughing while reading the sketch, so at least they were pleased.

Hader went on to explain that people were quickly rejecting the script by dropping it on the floor, as often happens in SNL pitch meetings. That didn’t stop Hader from continuing with what he loves. Barry is laden with Hader’s sense of humor, and so, presumably, will that Jonestown series Hader might be writing and starring in? I guess? Probably not, but I wouldn’t be surprised.