Hearing the ‘SNL’ Audience Curse on Live TV ‘Stunned’ Ego Nwodim

Streaming services will fight over live television the same way people in the Mad Max universe fight over water. It’s the last thing they can use to retain dominance in the streaming wars, as audiences grow bored with paint-by-numbers original shows and back catalog that often feel scattered, incomplete, or so bloated you search for thirty minutes, turn off whatever app you tried to use, claim you don’t even need it anymore, forget to cancel, and then return the next night to do it all over again.

Live TV is an answer to this problem (for now). Services are shelling out big bucks to court sports leagues, with some, like Disney and Nickelodeon, even customizing those sports to appeal to their younger audiences. Netflix is pumping out wrestling, and boxing, and roasts (oh my). Live television is a hot commodity, and it’s easy to see why. It generates ad revenue, can create a decent amount of FOMO in audiences, and has the potential for viral moments, such as a crowd of people yelling “shit” on Network television.

That’s what happened on Saturday Night Live this year, as Ego Nwodim strutted in front of the Weekend Update stage as her character Miss Eggy. She at one point asked the crowd, “‘cause these men ain’t what?” They answered! And they swore! And the shock on Nwodim, Colin Jost, and Michael Che’s faces is pretty incredible. It’s a perfect example of what can make live TV so special. Nwodim rolled with the punches, joking about how mad Lorne Michaels would be, and moved on. But in a recent interview with Collider, she got into how surprising the moment was.

“We did not think they were going to say anything because, if we did think so, and if we thought what they were going to say was going to be a curse word, it would have been flagged and it would have been taken out of the sketch,” she noted to the outlet. “Even if I would have loved for it to stay, and I would have no control over it. So the second time we did Miss Eggy, we couldn’t do ‘because these men ain’t what?’ again. We might have even tried to, or we talked about it, and standards and practices was like, ‘No, you can’t do that, because we know what the audience is going to do.’”

I can imagine a Standards and Practices person standing there in a suit that’s too nice, weasely yet emphatically saying, “no no no no no no no” when the idea sketch was brought up again. But the whole thing caught Nwodim off guard. “It is wild that it didn’t occur to any of us. But I was sincerely stunned. And it was really cool,” she explained. “Honestly, it tickled me that they did that. Then I got to do a thing that I love so much, which is improvised in character. That was an amazing experience to get to do that, and so rewarding and so fun and rewarding and possibly costly.” It also made for a huge moment in the landmark season.

Saturday Night Live gets a lot of flak for being broad, but it still holds a singular place in live television. I’m surprised a streaming service hasn’t tried to mimic it yet. They clearly think their live TV future lies in sports and Joe Rogan acolytes, but a live sketch show can give you moments like Miss Eggy and the rowdy crowd. Maybe you’ll get something like that from Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney, but he fought children, and that barely moved the needle.