Sanai Night Live
Collage by HSR
Cradled into my Ummi's lap like a Cheshire cat, her beige couch scratches my skin in an uncomfortable but familiar way. It's 2013, and I'm normally asleep before my eyes have time to scan the starry night sky, but tonight I'm wide awake. "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!" bounces off of the television screen, swooping its way through my grandmother's cozy Brooklyn apartment and into my eight-year-old ears. For the next hour and a half, laughter bubbles out of my throat like chocolate milk. I don't know why Ummi covers my ears multiple times during the show or why the word "virgin" is so funny, but I feel alive in a way I never knew how. Comedians yank me into a universe where the laughter never stops, originality burst at the seams, and everyone is unapologetically themselves. Saturday Night Live didn't just change my life. It helped me understand it.
Kenan Thompson, Kate McKinnon, and Jay Pharoah's faces soon became as familiar to me as my third-grade classmates. Due to the pandemic, I had to reminisce about our Saturday Night Live (SNL) days with Ummi over Zoom. "Sanai, you would come down every Saturday night, and then you would sleep over until Sunday," she tells me enthusiastically. "I worried that you were too young at first, but you were mature for your age. We always had such a special time." Not wanting to be left out, Baba, my grandfather, would proceed to come into the screen and yell, "Sometimes I stayed up and tried to watch it too!"
When I was eleven, I stopped watching the show as much, too busy with friends, extracurriculars, and other "tween" things to snuggle with Ummi like before. Four years later, on October 3, 2020, I found myself reaching for the remote to return to the show I once loved. I now sat on a squishy loft bed instead of a couch. My limbs were longer, mind wiser, and the show was now on its 46th season. But my excitement for the next 90 minutes to unfold remained all the same.
The first episode of SNL debuted on October 11, 1975, featuring stars like Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, and Gilda Radner. Lorne Michaels, the show's executive producer for 41 seasons (minus the five-year hiatus he took from 1980 to 1984), aimed to create "a comedy show, frank and intelligent, for young, urban adults." Each episode also includes a celebrity host and musical guest. There was no pilot episode because, as Michaels told Rolling Stones, "if they saw it beforehand, they'd say, 'You can't do that on television." NBC guaranteed 18 episodes to air on the network. Eight hundred sixty episodes later, millions of people across the world still tune in every weekend at 11:30 pm.
Working at SNL is no joke. In his book, A Very Punchable Face, former head-writer and now cast member Colin Jost describes a typical workweek at the iconic Studio 8H: "Monday is the pitch meeting, where you have to make your coworkers (and ideally the host) laugh. Tuesday, you're writing all day and night. Wednesday is the table read, followed by meetings with all the heads of production (if your sketch got picked) and heavy drinking (regardless of whether your sketch got picked). Thursday, you're at the rewrite table with the other writers, pitching jokes and eating a pound of candy and donuts to relieve your hangover. Friday, you're either rehearsing in the studio or filming a pre-taped piece in a location somewhere. And then Saturday is the show, followed by two parties."
I am convinced that the SNL cast members, writers, producers, and crew are superhumans. On a broadcast where 40 to 50 sketches are reduced to the eight performed live every week, you have to bring your A-game. Everyone on the show has an insane amount of passion for the work they do. There is a lot to live up to inside the SNL walls, and a member from 1995-2002, Will Ferell, remembers the anxiety during his audition, “It felt like we were a bunch of paratroopers, about to storm the beach at D-Day. And you’re looking along the walls, at all the past cast members. It’s just hitting you, and you’re trying not to vomit.”
Yet, nobody on SNL changes who they are for the sake of pleasing people. Comedy is supposed to piss people off, but never to the point of maliciousness. You must be self-assured and assertive in your choices. The writers on the show create peculiar characters we have all witnessed, and performers act while letting their personalities shine through. Most of the cast members were awkward in high school (like me), tried to overcome this by joining the drama club (like me), and now embrace their quirks and show them to the whole world (hopefully like me)! Some of my favorite actors from senior seasons are Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Amy Pohler, Bill Hadder, and Maya Rudolph. I love everyone in the current cast, especially Beck Bennet, Ego Nwodim, Bowen Yang, and Kyle Mooney.
But, the two members I adore the most are Colin Jost and Michael Che. These guys are mentally my best friends.
Jost and Che officially became the anchors of Weekend Update in 2014. Chevy Chase coined the idea of this ten-minute sketch poking fun at the week's news in the first season. Che is SNL’s first Black anchor ever (so crazy) and he is the confident, one-liner. Jost is quiet, questions everything, and tries to make everyone happy. But when the pair comes together, they complement and bring out the best in each other. "Che got me to think about Update differently," Jost says. "He taught me that if you try to do something you love and something someone else wants you to do, they both suffer, and the thing you love might disappear entirely."
There is something so surreal about seeing the events of the week reported back to you through the lens of a comedian. You realize the earth is one strange place. “Weekend Update” reads between media lines and points out biases in celebrities, companies, and politics (SNL is no stranger to that). It is as fake as fake news gets, but real at the same time.
I hope to see Colin Jost and Michael Che at the iconic Weekend Update desk in person someday. There is an SNL standby line where fans can line up to get tickets to the dress rehearsal or live show every episode. The pandemic prohibits this, of course. Plus, you can't be administered to the broadcast until you're sixteen. I'm three months away from my sixteenth birthday, so whenever standby lines open again, I'll be first in line. But on November 25, 2020, my favorite actor and #1 celebrity crush, Timothée Chalamet, announced he would be hosting Saturday Night Live next month. I soon found myself closer to the SNL doors than ever imagined. Here is an edited journal entry from that night:
It is December 13, 2020, and for a winter night in Manhattan, it surprisingly isn't too cold. My mom and I stand under the NBC Studio marquee on 49th Street, along with a good amount of people. After the show, cast members will exit the building at the entrance we are standing behind. I, and everyone else, hope that tonight's host — Timothée Chalamet, exists out this way too! My dad and I came to 30 Rock on Friday night, hoping to spot Timothée leaving from rehearsal, but we found no such luck. At least I snagged an SNL t-shirt with Timothée and Bruce Springteen's name from the NBC store. Now it's my mom's turn to escort me on my fangirl duties.
Finally, the show is over! I see Bowen Yang, Ego in her stunning yellow coat, and Kate Mckinnon walks by so quickly most people barely have time to notice the queen of comedy passing by. Pete Davidson comes out, and I almost can't believe it's real. I reach out my phone to take a selfie, and he offers to hold my phone for me and take a video, so of course, I let him! I can now officially say Pete Davidson held my phone … life is complete.
The hours start to pile on, and 2:30 am flashes on my phone. I can see my mom talking to another mom about how they wish "this Timothée boy would show up already." 3:00 comes and goes, and then it's 3:08 am. By this time in the night, it's pretty clear Timothée isn't going to show up. Passing the unlit Rockefeller Christmas tree, we walk to the car. While I'm disappointed I didn't see Timothée, I can't pretend that I didn't read on an SNL fan website, "Usually, the show host and musical guest often leave through a secret exit, and it's unlikely you'll see them after the show." But all the while, this night was one of the best nights of my life! Being in SNL glory, I realized how these comedians are just regular people who manage to make life a tad bit shinner. Whatever I do in life, I want to uphold that same mentality.
Source: Sanai Rashid
I showed my grandparents Timothée Chalamet and Pete Davidson's “Rap Roundtable” sketch from that night. They found it hilarious. Even though they have no clue what SoundCloud rappers are, similar to my younger self not understanding every joke, the comedy still manages to unite us. As humans, we like to act tough and mighty, but in reality, we all want to laugh at the end of the day. SNL takes this enormous idea of living and chops it into tiny pieces each week. No matter how sad, shocking or infuriating, life's events are, the SNL allows you to find the little pleasures in the craziness, for they make life worth living.
Sure some weeks, the host sucks, or the musical guests make me want to fall asleep, but that's the beauty of comedy and the arts in general: no two nights are the same. Twenty-two seasons of the show are currently on Hulu, so give an episode a try! There are also many sketches on SNL's Youtube channel, and some of my favorites are “Pepper Boy,” “Career Day,” and “2020 Democratic Debate.”
Every day of my life sort of feels like an episode of Sanai Night Live. So as I figure out how to be the best Sanai I can be, SNL has taught me that if you mess up, flub a line, wear the wrong costume, or run off the stage in terror — you will live to see Sunday morning. You might look like a hot mess when you wake up, but you will live to see Sunday morning.