Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Not long ago, there used to be two types of comedians,
Speaker 1: comedians and female comedians. Today there are so many women
Speaker 1: making us laugh that the qualifier has been rendered obsolete.
Speaker 1: Saturday Night Live deserves a lot of the credit for
Speaker 1: this development. The show has introduced us to Gilda Radner,
Speaker 1: Jan Hooks, Maya Rudolph, Teina Fay, and Kristen Wigg, to
Speaker 1: name just a few. But there's been another woman at
Speaker 1: s n L, a woman who has been quietly working
Speaker 1: day after day for seventeen years, often without sleeping, to
Speaker 1: usher in this reality years. I've been there yet. Paula
Speaker 1: Pell was working at a Florida theme park when she
Speaker 1: got her dream job as a writer at Saturday Night Live.
Speaker 1: Because the show has such a wide comedic range, it's
Speaker 1: the perfect challenge for Paula. You've got the hard hitting
Speaker 1: news parodies, and then on the other end, you know,
Speaker 1: it's got fart jokes. It's got everything in it of
Speaker 1: the low parts of comedy. Mostly me being responsible for Thailand.
Speaker 1: ALBM of Baldwin taking a taking a ship in a
Speaker 1: bed while he's sleeping, he Albim releases a gentle sleepaid
Speaker 1: into your system that allows deep, restless sleep for up
Speaker 1: to ten hours, so deep it turns off your brains
Speaker 1: need to control the bodily functions most likely to wake you.
Speaker 1: Rachel was like, did you yourself, I've slept like a baby. Done.
Speaker 1: You tell me? You tell you tell me, tell me,
Speaker 1: you tell me. In her memoir Bossy Pants, Tina Fey
Speaker 1: writes that her proudest moment as head writer at SNL
Speaker 1: was fighting for one of Pel's sketches introducing co text.
Speaker 1: Classic Classic co text is a commercial for the feminine
Speaker 1: protection of Yester, here featuring the sexy women proudly encumbered
Speaker 1: with bulky pads connected to belts peeking out of their clothes.
Speaker 1: I always you can't take the original room girls. Paula
Speaker 1: pell In person is genuine, charming and easy, the kind
Speaker 1: of person you might actually talk to if you sat
Speaker 1: next to her on a plane, which, for those of
Speaker 1: you not in the industry, is not a description of
Speaker 1: the typical comedy writer. I was always a bit of
Speaker 1: a class clown. I was. I was a good Catholic girl,
Speaker 1: so I always wanted to be I never wanted to
Speaker 1: get in trouble. But I really pushed the envelope because
Speaker 1: I would be funny in class and I do things
Speaker 1: like one of my teachers. I would um do a
Speaker 1: bit where I would go by him and drag my
Speaker 1: hand along the chalk line, you know, the chuck shelf,
Speaker 1: And then I'd come over and I'd say, you know,
Speaker 1: Mr Grocer, just a really great teacher, and I pat
Speaker 1: him on the back and I'd leave like a hand pratt.
Speaker 1: He'd let me make him a little bit the fool
Speaker 1: for a moment, and then he'd do you know, he
Speaker 1: looked like Rob Briner and all in the family at
Speaker 1: the big bushy mustache and along there he just kind
Speaker 1: of looked at camera three, you know, on existence and
Speaker 1: the audience would you know, the audience the class would
Speaker 1: crack up. Or I'd pass notes and say when I sneeze,
Speaker 1: because I have a really good fake sneeze. And I
Speaker 1: would say when I sneeze, everybody fall up their chairs.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'd always be doing something. But I
Speaker 1: grew up with an extremely funny dad, and my mom
Speaker 1: is he worked for Ellinois Bell. We grew up in
Speaker 1: Illinois and then moved to Orlando. When I was a teenager.
Speaker 1: But my entire childhood, my grandpa was a watchmaker for
Speaker 1: West Claks, So my dad always learned that from my grandpa.
Speaker 1: And then when he came to Florida, he worked for
Speaker 1: a T and T for many years, and then when
Speaker 1: he retired, he became a teacher of watch repair, watch making,
Speaker 1: all all of it. So that is the guy who
Speaker 1: works for the phone company. And how does he and
Speaker 1: he becomes watch tinkerer? How was the funny in his
Speaker 1: life at home? He's just ungodly witty. He's really never
Speaker 1: wanted to be in the business himself. Where did he
Speaker 1: express lead? Probably did, But you know, I look at
Speaker 1: all the people in my family and all the relatives
Speaker 1: of different generations, and they all had their thing. You know,
Speaker 1: my mom has a beautiful singing voice. They all had
Speaker 1: something that they wanted to do. But the way they
Speaker 1: grew up was you just you know, you have kids early,
Speaker 1: and you you kind of figure out what you need
Speaker 1: to do to pay for that. And and so they,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of times didn't have the luxury
Speaker 1: that kids have now. Even though it's hard to get
Speaker 1: a job to say, you know, I'm doing this, getting
Speaker 1: into that you didn't sign onto that program. What was
Speaker 1: wrong with you? Well, I, they wouldn't just do what
Speaker 1: you were supposed to do. They knew that I was
Speaker 1: pretty hopeless. I mean at my confirmation where you get
Speaker 1: the Holy Spirit. I came down the stairs at my
Speaker 1: party and had torn like eight holes in my pantios
Speaker 1: and said I had the Holy Spirit and just would
Speaker 1: do things like that all the time, you know. And
Speaker 1: this was before I drank or smoked anything. I was
Speaker 1: always a total hand. But my dad really taught me
Speaker 1: that he's the king of like. I will tell you that.
Speaker 1: One of the hardest times I laughed at him is
Speaker 1: my mom and I were watching Die Yard on television.
Speaker 1: My dad's cutting the yard, and he's outside cutting the yard.
Speaker 1: He's got his little jean shorts on and his tank top,
Speaker 1: and he keeps coming in and walking by and kind
Speaker 1: of half listening. He's a really good quiet half listener.
Speaker 1: But then he'll do something based on what he's been
Speaker 1: listening to. I. You know, I was listening to my
Speaker 1: mom and the terrorists had the long blond hair, you know,
Speaker 1: the big like kind of Nordic guy at the beginning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and my mom says, you know, I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I don't like long hair, but that is pretty foxy.
Speaker 1: And she's like commenting on him. So we're laughing about
Speaker 1: it and everything, and then I'm not getting Like an
Speaker 1: hour later, my dad just walked through. He had gone
Speaker 1: in my room and gotten a wig that I had
Speaker 1: of all my ship in my room, put a long
Speaker 1: wig on with just his grass cutting stuff, and just
Speaker 1: walked through. He didn't stop, he didn't do a bit.
Speaker 1: He just walked through. They also knew that rule like
Speaker 1: that you keep the ball in the air and play along.
Speaker 1: They were good, Yes, without the training, they were good
Speaker 1: improv people. King of like a prop he'll just And
Speaker 1: what I love about it is my parents are in
Speaker 1: their seventies now, and you know, and my mom was
Speaker 1: always like, you'd say, you know, you go, oh god,
Speaker 1: dad is so funny. You thank god, Thank god he's funny.
Speaker 1: We had so much laughter in our house, you know,
Speaker 1: despite any any dysfunction, as any family, we always laugh.
Speaker 1: You know, where did you go to college. I went
Speaker 1: to college at University of Tennessee. I first went to
Speaker 1: a local college in Orlando, a community college for two years.
Speaker 1: So you moved to Florida I moved to Florida. My
Speaker 1: dad went down for a T and T for that
Speaker 1: antitrust suit that they had. Um, yeah, it was like
Speaker 1: seven at late seventies. You know. We had gone a
Speaker 1: few times down to Disney World with our little pop
Speaker 1: up camper and like that was a vacation place that
Speaker 1: wasn't a place you move. And my parents sent us
Speaker 1: a little brought back a little polaroid of the house
Speaker 1: they bought, and it was, you know, about seventy tho dollars,
Speaker 1: but it had this gigantic pool because in our Lando
Speaker 1: so many people have pools, even with you know, inexpensive houses,
Speaker 1: and we just thought we won the lottery. You know.
Speaker 1: It was just insane. But we got there, and it
Speaker 1: was really hard the first year. I just never liked
Speaker 1: to be I mean, I think being new is a
Speaker 1: very important thing to do for growth. I think it
Speaker 1: really galvanizes a lot of stuff inside you, of who
Speaker 1: you are and everything. And I'm glad in hindsight, but
Speaker 1: I used to just wake up in the morning and
Speaker 1: just cry, and you know, just because I had so
Speaker 1: much familiarity and comfort with all the kids that I
Speaker 1: went to school with. It's just I was always quiet
Speaker 1: at first, you know, and then by my senior year,
Speaker 1: I got really involved in school and the girls, you know,
Speaker 1: would go because I remember when you'd come in, you know,
Speaker 1: you came in your junior year and I'd say, oh,
Speaker 1: really really, because I came in my sophomore year and
Speaker 1: sat next to you for an entire class and you were,
Speaker 1: you know, a cold little as wipe to me. But
Speaker 1: you know that's right. Now we're friends. And and what
Speaker 1: was the difference for you in terms of the people,
Speaker 1: if you can, if you can character from Illinois to Florida,
Speaker 1: I mean Florida. I mean, one thing that really helped
Speaker 1: me was I was always I always sang. So I
Speaker 1: went in imediately into a concert choir, and so that
Speaker 1: was wonderful because then I had a social group pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: But the one thing about Florida that was so different
Speaker 1: that freaked me out was that, you know, I never
Speaker 1: thought I was growing up in Illinois and necessarily I
Speaker 1: mean a cold sort of atmosphere. It was emotionally warm.
Speaker 1: I had great friends, you know, my family warm. But
Speaker 1: when I got to Florida, everybody hugged constantly. Everyone was
Speaker 1: so affectionate in such a crazy way that I remember saying,
Speaker 1: it's I remember coming home and going stop cupping my
Speaker 1: nipples tenor I don't know you in the choir no,
Speaker 1: but people would um. I kept thinking it was our
Speaker 1: director's birthday or something. I was like, what the hell
Speaker 1: is going on in here? Everyone is hugging our teacher,
Speaker 1: hugging each other. I realized it was just that was
Speaker 1: just the way everyone did, you know. And then my girl,
Speaker 1: my um, who eventually became my girlfriend of many years,
Speaker 1: was my best friend in high school and we were
Speaker 1: very huggy, and that all works because it was the
Speaker 1: right person, not the teacher, not until after we graduated exactly.
Speaker 1: Then then you went to the college down there. I
Speaker 1: went to the college for two years down there, and
Speaker 1: I was, um, well, their theater department was amazing, their
Speaker 1: art department was incredible, and I was also an artist
Speaker 1: Seminole Community College. But I mean the heads of those
Speaker 1: departments and the music department were so incredible that today
Speaker 1: they still are some of my favorite people that have
Speaker 1: gotten taught. Because my art professor, Grady Kimsey, who I'm
Speaker 1: a really good friend with still he had gone to
Speaker 1: ut years and years ago, just kept saying, you gotta
Speaker 1: go check out ut And then my girlfriend was going
Speaker 1: to North Carolina, so it kind of you know, i'd
Speaker 1: go up and visit, and I'd never been up in
Speaker 1: those mountains, and I just fell in love with the
Speaker 1: because I'm such a nature freaking Yeah, I went crazy
Speaker 1: for it. And when you left there, what happened? And
Speaker 1: then I finished college and I came home and I
Speaker 1: worked at the theme parks. What's that? How do you
Speaker 1: get the job at Disney? Like, who's is there somebody
Speaker 1: who's like a casting person? Yeah, there's talent people. And
Speaker 1: you know, I had worked with an improv group called
Speaker 1: sac Theater in Orlando. They at the time contracted out
Speaker 1: to Disney. So they did all the like in Epcot
Speaker 1: in Italy, the Comedian Dollar too. You know, they would
Speaker 1: do all the comedy that's kind of the roaming atmospheric comedy.
Speaker 1: And then they built Pleasure Island, which was the nighttime Disney.
Speaker 1: You know, all the nightclubs Pleasure Island, Pleasure Island, Welcome Come.
Speaker 1: Mickey has no panther. It was New Year's Eve every
Speaker 1: night he slipped roof Asure Island, an entire island they
Speaker 1: built that had all these clubs. They had like a
Speaker 1: big discotheque. They had a country Western sort of music club.
Speaker 1: It was just kind of like a strip of nighttime establishments,
Speaker 1: but all in Disney, but it was late night and
Speaker 1: kind of a downtown feel, like a cluster like and
Speaker 1: they would have of like New Year's Eve every night,
Speaker 1: so they'd have dancers come out and they dance. And
Speaker 1: it was really a fabulous place to work as a
Speaker 1: young actor because it felt cool and I could and
Speaker 1: I did a lot of improvisation, but then we also
Speaker 1: did like radio shows and singing. We could be kind
Speaker 1: of dirty. I mean, it wasn't filthy. I didn't I
Speaker 1: didn't go full till my typical filth that you know of.
Speaker 1: I didn't pell out. But you would interact with the guests,
Speaker 1: so there, you know, you'd be sitting there with some
Speaker 1: old British dude who's getting drunk and just get into
Speaker 1: a conversation. And I played Pamelia Perkins, the president of
Speaker 1: the Adventurous Club, and it was kind of a Teddy
Speaker 1: Roosevelt era sort of place. And I had this big
Speaker 1: buffont and I could just be as body as hell.
Speaker 1: I mean, I would get on guy's laps and you know,
Speaker 1: have my legs up in the air because I was
Speaker 1: like a matron sort of character. And we used to
Speaker 1: have such a blast. But then also during that time,
Speaker 1: I went down Penis Avenue for about two years. I
Speaker 1: was dating men for a little while, and I would
Speaker 1: hook up people, I mean just meeting like different people
Speaker 1: I met, well, just guests, and you know, you'd meet
Speaker 1: some super super charismatic, handsome person. You'd be sitting there
Speaker 1: laughing and you being in costume, and then they'd be like,
Speaker 1: what are you guys doing after you know the characters?
Speaker 1: What do these characters do next? And there was a
Speaker 1: restaurant and there were bars down the street that they
Speaker 1: would let us after work go to. So you just
Speaker 1: take change all your clothes and you know, blow drive
Speaker 1: the ship out of your hair and go Now I'm
Speaker 1: twenty five again. And I'd walk down there and and
Speaker 1: it was New Year's Eve every day it was New
Speaker 1: Year's but you vomited every day and lost your virginity
Speaker 1: every day. Pamlion Pamelia Perkins. Pamelia Pamelia Perkins. Of course
Speaker 1: he's banging the guests two at a time. I mean,
Speaker 1: for an actor at that time, I was making really
Speaker 1: good money and had full insurance everything, had a car,
Speaker 1: rented a little house. You know. It was kind of
Speaker 1: it was. It was a beautiful It was a beautiful life.
Speaker 1: And then I got start crazy with it. And that
Speaker 1: was just about when a thing happened. But how does
Speaker 1: how does that happen? How did they find you? It was?
Speaker 1: It was a beautifully random, amazing thing. I had worked
Speaker 1: with Sick Theater. They had a theater downtown. They would
Speaker 1: call me every so often and I go do a
Speaker 1: set with them where I do a character that I
Speaker 1: had written. And so they said, you know, we're going
Speaker 1: to do this sketch comedy pilot called chuckle Head. And
Speaker 1: they said, will you be in it and do those characters?
Speaker 1: And I said sure. I mean I was doing like
Speaker 1: I got beat up in America's most wanted you know,
Speaker 1: all the local all the things that were shooting in Orlando.
Speaker 1: I would do, you know, And I did this lottery
Speaker 1: character for years in about three states that was played
Speaker 1: the Wurlitz organ. You know, sexy characters, ale, you know,
Speaker 1: but all from the Matron Handbook. I was born at
Speaker 1: fifty Alec. But they called me. My agent called me
Speaker 1: one day and she said, are you sitting down? I
Speaker 1: said yes. She said, Saturday Night Live saw that pilot
Speaker 1: Lauren wants to meet you. And I'm like, okay, for
Speaker 1: what And she goes, now, it is not an audition,
Speaker 1: but he wants to fly you up and talk to you.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, well, what is it? Any am I
Speaker 1: being summoned? What in the f And I said okay?
Speaker 1: And so I flew up there. You know, talk about defecating.
Speaker 1: I mean it was like emmodium city the entire two
Speaker 1: days of getting there. He was two hours, you know,
Speaker 1: or three hours late for the meeting, but he was
Speaker 1: super nice. And I sat with Marcy Klein and Ayala
Speaker 1: in the talent room and I was so nervous that
Speaker 1: they ordered food and they said, um, we're ordering zen Palette.
Speaker 1: You know, vegetarian, we're ordering zen Palette. Do you want anything?
Speaker 1: And I said, just just like a couple white rice
Speaker 1: would be good, just like rice. And I just got
Speaker 1: a dry cup of white rice and set and ate it.
Speaker 1: I went in and he said we have just cleaned house.
Speaker 1: It was it was win Well Ferrell and everybody ken.
Speaker 1: He said, we've cleaned house. We're starting over. You know
Speaker 1: it's gonna rise again, We're hoping, and we're going to
Speaker 1: try to infuse it with new talent, and we would
Speaker 1: like to hire you to be a writer. When I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, well, I've never done that. I you know,
Speaker 1: I don't even I mean, I didn't even use a
Speaker 1: computer at that point. And I said, I can't, you know,
Speaker 1: And if you tell them you can't, then they will.
Speaker 1: You will keep saying well, and he said, well, we'll
Speaker 1: show you, you know. But it was so quick that
Speaker 1: it made me worry that there was something wrong, like
Speaker 1: there was a scam or something like this was all
Speaker 1: some kind of freaking joke, because I was like, this
Speaker 1: can't be And how soon after that were you moving
Speaker 1: to New York? Um? I had five days to move,
Speaker 1: packed up my whole life, gave my animals to my mom,
Speaker 1: temporarily went up to New York City, and you know,
Speaker 1: just was just ungodly miserable and I mean with fear.
Speaker 1: But Mike Shoemaker called me right before I left because
Speaker 1: I was starting to freak out to the point of going,
Speaker 1: I'm going to my dream place. I mean, I was
Speaker 1: sessed with us. Now. When I was little, I used
Speaker 1: to audiotape it I used to perform Rosanna, Rosanna Dana
Speaker 1: from my high school in the auditorium, and I thought,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna be sitting around with like, you know,
Speaker 1: ten Harvard dudes looking at me, going who the funk is? Who?
Speaker 1: Who hired Kathy Bates light and you know, and why
Speaker 1: is she here? And I adore Kathy Baits by the way,
Speaker 1: but they were just you know, I thought that I
Speaker 1: would be so not of their world, of these writer
Speaker 1: early sort of people, and I didn't realize how many
Speaker 1: writers there are performers. And so Shoemaker called me, and
Speaker 1: I still thank him for this because he really is
Speaker 1: the reason that I ended up getting the balls to
Speaker 1: get there. But he called and he said, some people
Speaker 1: want to say hi. And it was you know, Cindy
Speaker 1: Capanair and Lori nas So and all these people that
Speaker 1: were new that were terrified, and they all got on
Speaker 1: the phone going, we can't wait to meet you. And
Speaker 1: I hung up the phone and I just burst into tears.
Speaker 1: I said, it's all gonna be okay, no matter what,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be okay. It's just a group of people.
Speaker 1: It's almost like of all the years of doing plays.
Speaker 1: It's like it's a new cast getting Manicus seventeen years.
Speaker 1: I've been there yet seventeen and well, I think in general,
Speaker 1: comedy has gotten a little, you know, it's gone through
Speaker 1: its ebbs and flows in terms of things being more
Speaker 1: character driven or or you know, more conceptual. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that show always has a great amount of both,
Speaker 1: and I always loved the fact that that show had
Speaker 1: something for everybody. You know, I'd sit with a group
Speaker 1: of people that I'd love certain things and they'd love
Speaker 1: certain things, and so I, yeah, I love the band.
Speaker 1: I love the balance, you know, I love the balance
Speaker 1: of it. Um. But one of the biggest things that's
Speaker 1: changed in general to me is the Internet. Because when
Speaker 1: I was growing up and you were an actor, you
Speaker 1: had to create a body of work by really doing
Speaker 1: it and getting hired, and then they would give you
Speaker 1: access to tape of it. You know, you couldn't just
Speaker 1: go on machines and videotape yourself and make a beautifully edited,
Speaker 1: great comedy piece and put that on the internet. I mean,
Speaker 1: you just can't do it. I mean, my my real
Speaker 1: I just remember, you know, I do a tiny role
Speaker 1: in something and just love that. I was adding that
Speaker 1: to my real and you'd have to go to like
Speaker 1: a video place and pay the guy to sit there
Speaker 1: and do it on the gigantic machine. The Internet has
Speaker 1: changed things profound. Yeah, Its just and I think in
Speaker 1: a bad way. It gave people a sense of entitlement
Speaker 1: of there isn't as much awe of all of it
Speaker 1: because they do it themselves. So it's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I have you know this, I've done, I've done my show.
Speaker 1: You know, they created themselves, which is very empowering and wonderful,
Speaker 1: And it's also getting a lot more comedy out there
Speaker 1: of hilarious people that would never usually walk into a
Speaker 1: room nervous in an audition, right right right. That seems
Speaker 1: to me to have been the condition for me, which
Speaker 1: is I've come to us and now and um the
Speaker 1: signals that I picked up Hooks and all that crowd
Speaker 1: back then was you know, my career wasn't that iconic
Speaker 1: to send up me in my career And so it's
Speaker 1: not like I'm Stallone or Schwartz and Negress like that
Speaker 1: where we do that. So you come in and right
Speaker 1: away you pick up I've got to become like everybody
Speaker 1: else and become a member of the company. And as
Speaker 1: soon as I got that, as soon as I kind
Speaker 1: of picked up that vibe from them, I was, you know,
Speaker 1: asked to come back and come back and come back.
Speaker 1: And what it does is it for me as a performer,
Speaker 1: it's killed everything else that's supposed to be funny. Well,
Speaker 1: and I wonder what that's like for you where you're
Speaker 1: in the world, where you work with the funniest people.
Speaker 1: No matter what people say about S and l you know,
Speaker 1: it's not always gonna work, but when it works, it's
Speaker 1: I think it's the best which has been like for you, well,
Speaker 1: you get so you get so insolent, you know, isolated
Speaker 1: there in great ways, in weird ways, because it's there's
Speaker 1: nothing like it. You cannot compare that experience with anything.
Speaker 1: But it really is so intense. And you you know,
Speaker 1: I started writing movies two years ago and working into that,
Speaker 1: I realized how stretched out the time is, to the
Speaker 1: point where, you know, I mean we'll go between dress
Speaker 1: and air and Lauren will say, I don't like the
Speaker 1: whole top of that, like add you know, a couple
Speaker 1: of new jokes, so you're you're coming up with new
Speaker 1: jokes at eleven fifteen, And let me just put a
Speaker 1: finer point on that for our radio audience, our podcast audience,
Speaker 1: because um that SNL does a full dress rehearsal at
Speaker 1: eight o'clock on Saturday night with an audience with a
Speaker 1: lengthier show. And let's say normally they have seven sketches
Speaker 1: in the air show, they do like eleven sketches at eight,
Speaker 1: and they're gonna pick what worked best and then they're
Speaker 1: going to be right. So when that finishes at ten,
Speaker 1: maybe ten fifteen, maybe ten thirty, who knows. It's a
Speaker 1: long show show, and then you've got an hour where
Speaker 1: you're sitting in a room and in that hour between shows,
Speaker 1: that's when Lauren and the producers and their VIDs edit
Speaker 1: that show and choose what they're going to do and
Speaker 1: ask for rewrites, and they're getting rid of that audience.
Speaker 1: They're bringing in a new one. The band is warming
Speaker 1: up the new audience, and you'll walk through and have
Speaker 1: a task to change something, and you're walking by these
Speaker 1: people that are walking in to their seats looking like
Speaker 1: I'm so excited up here, and you're like, I don't
Speaker 1: know what we're gonna have for you, but we're gonna
Speaker 1: do it right now. You know. I did a Bobby
Speaker 1: and Marty one time with Will and Anna and they
Speaker 1: found out that we were losing time quickly, and so
Speaker 1: they said, you have to take like two minutes out
Speaker 1: of this. I mean, it was just and it was
Speaker 1: between the commercial break. So I went downstairs and I
Speaker 1: was kneeling down with the que card people. They were
Speaker 1: just putting tape over sections and We're like, okay, does
Speaker 1: that make sense? Does it does? And go with it? Children?
Speaker 1: And I'm pretty sure that if like Dr Oz did
Speaker 1: my actual age, you know how they test you and
Speaker 1: your actually I'm probably a hundred and eighty now because
Speaker 1: the stress of that. It's just such adrenaline. And you know,
Speaker 1: but I mean the beautiful thing about s and l
Speaker 1: is hosts will come in and and you know, never
Speaker 1: you because you were always very approachable. Whenever anyone asked
Speaker 1: me about hosts, I always tell them that, you know,
Speaker 1: you are always one of my favorite hosts. I'm not
Speaker 1: blowing air up here, you're COOLO. I got a little
Speaker 1: I'm going to what is cool? And yeah, well yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're blowing smoke up, but it's obviously could you
Speaker 1: have men? Do have other holes? But like you know,
Speaker 1: host will come in with their people and they're very
Speaker 1: nice and very scared, but they have a little bit
Speaker 1: of that sometimes because they're fearful and they have people
Speaker 1: protecting them. And by the end of the week, they're
Speaker 1: just always at that after party. You know, they're sitting
Speaker 1: with everybody and laying across everybody because it feels like theater.
Speaker 1: It feels like I'm in theater camp. And this is
Speaker 1: what I miss doing. More from Paula Pell in a moment,
Speaker 1: this is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: Paula Pell has been writing sketches at SNL for seventeen years,
Speaker 1: but like any of us, sometimes she just gets tired
Speaker 1: of comedy. Oh my god, yeah, the pity now my
Speaker 1: my gale of fourteen years. She watches a lot of TV,
Speaker 1: and she watches shows that I wouldn't generally watch, like
Speaker 1: Castle or you know, like Hawai Fi Bo or like
Speaker 1: Murder Shore and I mean, you know, murder shows, C
Speaker 1: S I and CIS. She'll watch all She'll take she'll
Speaker 1: tape all these shows in like elementary all these new shows,
Speaker 1: and I'll get totally hooked on things and realize that
Speaker 1: I just love I always loved having drama and comedy together.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the fun thing about writing movies. Now
Speaker 1: you can have a moment that's just a heart wrenching
Speaker 1: moment in a comedy that's that's real. You know, that
Speaker 1: feels more three dimensional, because after seventeen years of sketches,
Speaker 1: you do get a little stir crazy with feeling like
Speaker 1: you're just writing something on the surface. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: great to make people laugh, but when I go home,
Speaker 1: I love to watch dramas or some reality things. I
Speaker 1: love to just not think about comedy. I do the
Speaker 1: show and I go out there and it's really um
Speaker 1: and I'll say, I'm never doing this. This is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: I can't be bothered with this toastiness. These people are
Speaker 1: all young, and they're all crazy, and they're all puerile,
Speaker 1: and all they talk about his thoughts and brazils and
Speaker 1: so forth. And then I'm gonna go do as you
Speaker 1: like it in the park. Then of course, you know,
Speaker 1: Lauren calls me. I'm like, okay, yeah, he'll call me
Speaker 1: like I get thrown off the plane on American airlines
Speaker 1: for for playing words with friends. The phone rings like
Speaker 1: three or four days there it's Lauren and he literally
Speaker 1: he literally, he literally goes, so perhaps we should do something.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh my god, I can't believe you.
Speaker 1: People are insane. This would be the week you should
Speaker 1: wish would be the week, you know, which like that
Speaker 1: thing where we have to do it now, but you
Speaker 1: can't say no to them. You feel like you you
Speaker 1: just forget how immediate it is. You know, years ago
Speaker 1: I did a sketch with UM, with a little young,
Speaker 1: little sweet faced Um justin timber Lake when he was
Speaker 1: in in Sync. I used to write a sketch called
Speaker 1: UM six Degrees Celsius and it was like a boy
Speaker 1: group and Will Ferrell was their manager and you had
Speaker 1: to stay threeet away from them because clearly he had
Speaker 1: done some inappropriate things. He had tinted glasses. Of course,
Speaker 1: you know. It was Jimmy Fallon and Chris Ktan and
Speaker 1: Horatio and they were and they were in Chris Chris
Speaker 1: Parnell and they were a boy group and then we'd
Speaker 1: have the host in it. Well that week in Sync
Speaker 1: was there. We asked and Sync to be another boy
Speaker 1: group in this competition on the show, playing a fake
Speaker 1: boy group, And so I wrote a song called hold
Speaker 1: the Pickle, and they were like McDonald's employees and so
Speaker 1: in sync came out with like McDonald's outfits on and
Speaker 1: saying hold the pit Gill and they're so they were
Speaker 1: so crazy talented, Like they got there and looked at
Speaker 1: it for ten minutes and had full harmonies and full choreography.
Speaker 1: I mean, they threw that ship together. I was just
Speaker 1: amazed they came on. And then remember what was the
Speaker 1: MTV thing every Sunday, like the big I can't think
Speaker 1: of the name of it, but the show the like
Speaker 1: show that they show all the videos and everything at
Speaker 1: that time. Do you remember what those Okay, well, anyway,
Speaker 1: it was. It was a very do you know the
Speaker 1: big video show that the kids used to dance to. Um.
Speaker 1: But the next morning, I'm in my little apartment and
Speaker 1: you know, I probably ordered four entrees from some to
Speaker 1: go things to eat my pain, because you always did.
Speaker 1: On Sunday and I turned on the TV and Justin
Speaker 1: timber Lake was on TV on the show at noon
Speaker 1: in Times Square, and there were just hundreds of girls
Speaker 1: down there waving to him, and they had a banner
Speaker 1: with the words to the song hold the Pickle on
Speaker 1: the banner that they had painted, and I was looking
Speaker 1: at it, going, that cannot be because as we just
Speaker 1: did this, like I just woke up and we just
Speaker 1: and then I just remembered like I used to get obsessed.
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't have the Internet, I didn't have videos.
Speaker 1: But back at the day, I mean, my god, if
Speaker 1: I would have grown up in the Internet era, I
Speaker 1: would have been the queen of like, you know, just
Speaker 1: having my own fans site. Yeah, because I just loved
Speaker 1: it and I wanted And we were having a funny
Speaker 1: conversation the other day. In my journals. When I was young,
Speaker 1: I would talk about Rocky because I was obsessed with
Speaker 1: Rocky Sylvester Stallone and the very first Rocky movie. And
Speaker 1: I would talk about, like, in two weeks people magazine
Speaker 1: is going to have an article about him, and I
Speaker 1: would wait until we got that magazine and then I
Speaker 1: would take it home and I cut it out and
Speaker 1: put it in a script. You know, you you had
Speaker 1: to wait to get information or a photo of someone,
Speaker 1: or if you really loved a singer, you had to
Speaker 1: wait for their album to come out, and now you
Speaker 1: just you just when I was a kid, there was
Speaker 1: no cable, there was no E v D that the
Speaker 1: trailers for movies and and the build up, the ramp
Speaker 1: up of a campaign to advertise a film was or
Speaker 1: at least it seemed so far reaching back then. I'll
Speaker 1: never forget. We went to The Godfather and I was
Speaker 1: underage and we we snuck in. I forget how now
Speaker 1: we stood in line and it was like three screening,
Speaker 1: you know, like one o'clock, four o'clock, seven o'clock, and
Speaker 1: you go to the top of the line and didn't
Speaker 1: get in, so you waited another three hours, you know,
Speaker 1: reading Mad magazine or some crap we read back then.
Speaker 1: And I always say, now people wait to stream a
Speaker 1: movie and it's like, you know, four minutes to stream
Speaker 1: in their tap and their foot and going come on exactly.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is that they'll watch twenty minutes
Speaker 1: e and then they'll pause and they'll go talk on
Speaker 1: the phone and they'll go play interest in it. Now
Speaker 1: you are you left to do a television show? I left.
Speaker 1: I left about six years ago to do I wrote
Speaker 1: a pilot called Thick and Thin that was about too
Speaker 1: fat sisters that grew up fat and one gets really
Speaker 1: hot and thin and beautiful. NBC. Yeah, we shot the pilot.
Speaker 1: It got picked up for like thirteen, but it was
Speaker 1: a bad year for multi camera sitcoms. It was kind
Speaker 1: of when they were getting phased out. And it was
Speaker 1: also about a subject that was a little weird still
Speaker 1: back in that era of you know, there wasn't a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of stuff with weight stuff, and I really
Speaker 1: wanted like real people that look fat, you know, that
Speaker 1: look fat because I had struggled with my weight all
Speaker 1: my life and lost huge amounts of weight a couple
Speaker 1: of times in my life. Sharon Glass and Martin Maull
Speaker 1: played the parents, and they played my parents, so it
Speaker 1: was their names. They did all of my dad's stick
Speaker 1: I mean, it was really a special thing. My parents
Speaker 1: came to the pilot and that, you know, it was.
Speaker 1: It was very emotional and wonderful and fun. But the
Speaker 1: process of developing a network show like that is so hard,
Speaker 1: and I really, in hindsight learned so you know, learned
Speaker 1: so many things after the fact. You know which one
Speaker 1: thing arned that you can say, um, well, the biggest
Speaker 1: thing I learned as I'm I'm a people pleaser and
Speaker 1: I always like to get to know people and see
Speaker 1: the good sides of them, and I wanted to have
Speaker 1: a lot of positive energy with with them because I
Speaker 1: had known so many people that developed stuff that we're
Speaker 1: like welcome to hell, you know, everyone just gets so
Speaker 1: negative about it. I thought, you know what, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go into this. I'm so lucky to be doing this.
Speaker 1: I'm so thrilled. But I befriended everyone so intensely, you know,
Speaker 1: especially like network people and everything. I befriended everyone, so
Speaker 1: then there was this sort of discomfort at telling them
Speaker 1: things they didn't want to hear, or me pushing back
Speaker 1: in bigger ways. And because I had already established that
Speaker 1: we're all just friends and we're all having fun and
Speaker 1: we're laughing, then they would suggest things that were just
Speaker 1: show ruining and I would just be like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: you know, and I just at the time didn't really
Speaker 1: have my voice as a as a creative person to
Speaker 1: lead something like that, you know, So I I regret that,
Speaker 1: and I regret not um pushing more. I mean casting
Speaker 1: was you know, a little brutal just because of the weight.
Speaker 1: Thing is they would they would bring people in that
Speaker 1: were I wanted real people that were you know, I
Speaker 1: wanted the other sister to me a real heavy person.
Speaker 1: And and when they'd audition heavy people sometimes I'd watch
Speaker 1: their faces when they're auditioning them, and They're kind of
Speaker 1: like looking at their bodies, and I'm going, this is
Speaker 1: not good that they don't get it that like that.
Speaker 1: You know, rose Anne was freaking huge hit show. It's like,
Speaker 1: come on. I don't even remember who said this to me,
Speaker 1: but one of the network people pulled me aside during
Speaker 1: one of the castings and she said, did you audition
Speaker 1: this other girl for that part for the heavy sister?
Speaker 1: And I said no, I auditioned her for the thin sister.
Speaker 1: And she said you couldn't pad her, could you. And
Speaker 1: I just remember walking away going, this is so dead
Speaker 1: in the water. You know, now movies, you're doing a
Speaker 1: movie now, Yeah, I did. I worked a little bit
Speaker 1: on Bridesmaids. I just came a couple of different times
Speaker 1: and just you know, pitch jokes on the set, did
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Had never done anything movie wise ever,
Speaker 1: And I really really had fun doing it. I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. And then I Judd started hiring me to
Speaker 1: do some rewrites on different movi vis and punch ups
Speaker 1: and stuff, and I started to see, you know, because
Speaker 1: I had tried to get into it before in other
Speaker 1: eras of my life. Um. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: I had had an idea for a while about my journal,
Speaker 1: my childhood journal, of doing something with it. I wanted
Speaker 1: to do a little play based on it. I wanted
Speaker 1: to do something with it, and Tina had, you know,
Speaker 1: I'd read it to her many times in s and L.
Speaker 1: I'd read it to people before I came up with
Speaker 1: an idea for a movie to do to pitch and
Speaker 1: I pitched it to Universal and they bought it with
Speaker 1: Tina attached to it as a producer and potentially to
Speaker 1: be in it. And so I wrote that that's in
Speaker 1: the work that we're waiting to find out all the
Speaker 1: finals on you know, on that what's happening with that.
Speaker 1: It's it's um, it's been you know, gone through three
Speaker 1: rites and all that. So I'm excited about that about
Speaker 1: two sisters. And then Judd and I just wrote a movie,
Speaker 1: and then last summer I worked on my first full
Speaker 1: movie experience with This is forty. I was the executive
Speaker 1: producer on That is horrible. But do you ever wonder
Speaker 1: what it would be like if you your wife were
Speaker 1: separated by something bigger death like her death? I have
Speaker 1: given it a fair amount of thought, not any painful way,
Speaker 1: which is like a gentle floating off. It's got to
Speaker 1: be peaceful. I mean, this is the mother of your children.
Speaker 1: And then the new wife would be great. God, I
Speaker 1: can't wait to meet my second wife. I hope she
Speaker 1: likes me better than this one. I've finally kind of
Speaker 1: gotten my foothold in the movie thing now and it's
Speaker 1: like really fun. I really love it. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a lot of it's a lot of waiting around for
Speaker 1: news on things. It's a lot of you know, I
Speaker 1: can't plan anything because you don't know what your next
Speaker 1: year is going to be. But so beautiful to be
Speaker 1: able to work at home with my animals and d
Speaker 1: and just like to be our home buddy, aren't you Well?
Speaker 1: You always come back to the same thing when I've
Speaker 1: spoken to you. I was despondent when you left, because
Speaker 1: you know, you were such a great You're such a
Speaker 1: great writer. You're one of my favorite writers of all times.
Speaker 1: You're so funny. No, but I really mean that, and
Speaker 1: you and then when you left and you said the
Speaker 1: same that you like. I just want to go home
Speaker 1: to d and my animals, animal animal. I want to
Speaker 1: go live the lesbian life. I want to be on
Speaker 1: a lesbian fire. I want to wear my dance go Clag's.
Speaker 1: I want to get a mag light and go under
Speaker 1: a dumpster and get some feral cats out of there.
Speaker 1: I have a horse up there, I have, you know,
Speaker 1: just it's so beautiful and inexpensive up there at the
Speaker 1: Hudson Valley. It's like the amazing place. But also, um,
Speaker 1: just I'm realizing to just the finite amount of time,
Speaker 1: you know, I've I've spent more time since I've been
Speaker 1: doing the movie stuff the last two years, I've spent
Speaker 1: more time with my family. I've been down in Florida
Speaker 1: a lot to visit them. It's just feeling so much
Speaker 1: better for me. And also, I love like Lauren whenever
Speaker 1: I'm there. I did the Louis c. K Show and
Speaker 1: I'm doing this next to here, and um, and you know,
Speaker 1: Lauren will say to me, it's still fun, right, it's fun.
Speaker 1: You had fun, And I go, oh my god, it
Speaker 1: it's amazing. But if I did it all the time now,
Speaker 1: I would be like a you know, a bitter hay
Speaker 1: because I just feel like I wasn't having time or
Speaker 1: energy to do other things. And also everyone is is
Speaker 1: very young. I mean my nieces and nephews I saw
Speaker 1: delivered out of my sister's uh the gene and they're
Speaker 1: in their mid twenties, and ones of physicians assistant ones.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've named myself at SNL Nanny sn L
Speaker 1: because I'll sit at the real rate table, like what
Speaker 1: isn't the name of that where's that detective on television?
Speaker 1: I'm like my grandpa, Oh my god, Grandpa. They'll kN
Speaker 1: on the door and super ready and like Grandpa will
Speaker 1: be right there. It'll be right there. God damn it.
Speaker 1: But if you have a good night there, you feel
Speaker 1: like you're twenty again. I mean, you know, if you
Speaker 1: have a night where you feel like I mean, last
Speaker 1: week I had a really fun Scotch I wrote with
Speaker 1: Kate McKinnon for her and Louis c. K and it
Speaker 1: was funny and dirty and where they were at last
Speaker 1: call at a bar and they're just trying to find
Speaker 1: common ground because they know they're the only two people left.
Speaker 1: So they're like, wait, you're from Arizona. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I'm from northern California. That's crazy, and I'm they were.
Speaker 1: They made out in the most disgusting, face eating way
Speaker 1: you could ever imagine. And uh, I just went home
Speaker 1: on that old school SNL high, just a whole high,
Speaker 1: you know, like the whole weekend, just bouncing off the walls.
Speaker 1: And then you start going, maybe I could do this
Speaker 1: all the time. I got I'm gonna do it. I
Speaker 1: would leave there on after a good show. I think
Speaker 1: there's I'm gonna be a cast. Addition, I'll do even
Speaker 1: even odd shows like the Gas No Twitter, You're on
Speaker 1: Twitter on my Twitter, You're you kill me on Twitter?
Speaker 1: Thank you? Talk about like I was laying on a
Speaker 1: bed and I was having a great time and I
Speaker 1: was eating sacks and I was really cozy and everything
Speaker 1: was just I felt so great, and then security guard
Speaker 1: came up. You target is closed. Man, It's like the
Speaker 1: Tony Ben routine. People always really respond to my target tweets.
Speaker 1: Twitter is just another form for you. Twitter is really
Speaker 1: I got very addicted to it just because it's so
Speaker 1: simple and it's like a video game for comedy writers
Speaker 1: to just do a one liner about something. And I
Speaker 1: started doing these hey young girl tweets and I might
Speaker 1: do a little book of them, maybe um an illustrated.
Speaker 1: You know, my nieces. I just used to drive them
Speaker 1: insane when they were growing up, because I was, hey,
Speaker 1: young girls, keep your boobs in your shirt, you're button
Speaker 1: your pants, your eyes on your dreams, your head in
Speaker 1: the cloud. You know, like you also say the thing
Speaker 1: about you know if the guy does this. Yeah, remember
Speaker 1: the hey young girls stuff just came out of my
Speaker 1: nieces because I would bring them to tests and l
Speaker 1: and they were just these dropped to gorgeous girls and
Speaker 1: they would have people I'm not talking about people just
Speaker 1: checking them out, but like at if I brought them
Speaker 1: backstage or whatever, there'd be some some dude that would
Speaker 1: just end up coming up and saying, you know, really
Speaker 1: aggressive checking them out. And so they still imitate me
Speaker 1: how I would grab them with my meaty, polish firm
Speaker 1: wife arm and go, she's farting. You want to talk
Speaker 1: about it? I mean I would just become this raving
Speaker 1: crazy woman looking at them like get you know, and
Speaker 1: so I always i'd always be like, are your sexually active.
Speaker 1: I would always want to know all their details and everything,
Speaker 1: like a character out of a rock huts and yeah,
Speaker 1: the chaperone, Yeah, and the chaperone. That's that's uh all
Speaker 1: storrying my son away from the hoogie dancers. You know, um,
Speaker 1: you're a woman, and you're a woman in comedy, and
Speaker 1: comedy has changed a lot over the last forty years.
Speaker 1: But I you know, I feel like it's changed a
Speaker 1: lot over the last fifteen years. It's even more You've
Speaker 1: got people who were much more you know, they're just
Speaker 1: like the guys I mean, Sarah Silverman and people who
Speaker 1: are much more in living color. If you will, I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you, you know, your assessment of that,
Speaker 1: how that's changed for women over your career. And also
Speaker 1: do you think that there's like certain glass ceilings still,
Speaker 1: like on late night comedy shows, like do you think
Speaker 1: they'll ever replace Letterman? Or like can a woman do
Speaker 1: that job? Because you have women hosting daytime shows and
Speaker 1: no one's on during the day, but the big three
Speaker 1: of the networks they don't have a woman doing that show.
Speaker 1: Do you think that will ever change? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's you know, I remember that era, we're
Speaker 1: a couple of them were doing it, Joan Rivers and
Speaker 1: different people were trying it and they were you know,
Speaker 1: they were all and ups. But they had been around
Speaker 1: for a long time, but not lately. So I feel
Speaker 1: like now a lot of those young funny girls are
Speaker 1: either getting their own show, you know, doing a show,
Speaker 1: a television show, but not a talk show, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean Jimmy, he's such a fan of everyone and
Speaker 1: so enthusiastic and joyful about music and everything that that
Speaker 1: was like a perfect fit for him and hilarious. So
Speaker 1: he worked out so great for that. But I think
Speaker 1: with women it's also sometimes hard at s and L
Speaker 1: Like with auditions now, where you go, well, you see
Speaker 1: people and you go where where are a lot of
Speaker 1: the super funny you know, super funny women and you
Speaker 1: know they're around, you know they exist, but a lot
Speaker 1: of them do they they are young, and they they're
Speaker 1: aggressively getting their own shows and stuff like that. The
Speaker 1: second year I was at SNL, second or third, I
Speaker 1: remember having an agent say to me, um, yeah, we
Speaker 1: gotta get you, uh you know, we gotta get a
Speaker 1: game plan for you and get you know, so you
Speaker 1: can get get out of here and and get a
Speaker 1: get a show going on. All that I remember thinking
Speaker 1: talking about, like, what are you talking about? You know,
Speaker 1: this is like the dream job. So but I think
Speaker 1: I think for women it's just like I've always said
Speaker 1: about us, and now it's like the funny rises to
Speaker 1: the top with it. And if somebody's super funny and
Speaker 1: has abandoned and enjoy and they're not trying, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't like ever with a comedy person them acting
Speaker 1: like someone else or acting dirty just to be funny.
Speaker 1: I'm the filthiest person on earth. But if it's not
Speaker 1: funny dirty, if I'm not being funny nobody, you know,
Speaker 1: then forget it, because there's got to be some class
Speaker 1: to my. To my all of a joke does not
Speaker 1: have a class to it to, then forget it. But
Speaker 1: you know, for a while, they're some auditions I would
Speaker 1: watch where girls would come out and just try to
Speaker 1: just sex it up and be funny and dirty, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's like it's funny. You feel like not all
Speaker 1: of them, certainly, but enough of them. They go out
Speaker 1: in front of a camera, a lot of them in
Speaker 1: the comedy world, and they think feel like, well, I
Speaker 1: don't want to go too far over this song because
Speaker 1: I don't want to lose this oven thing. I really
Speaker 1: would like to kiss Leo in a movie, right, I
Speaker 1: want to be as much. You don't want to see
Speaker 1: anyone thinking too hard while they're you know, the the
Speaker 1: greatest auditions at SNL were people that came in purely
Speaker 1: as themselves, came in did a bunch of craziest characters
Speaker 1: and you just went, this is a force of nature.
Speaker 1: What is this? What is this human? Like? They were
Speaker 1: making me laugh so hard and I don't even know
Speaker 1: what where they're getting it from. When when women have
Speaker 1: that the condition though, where it's like it's like they
Speaker 1: sit there and they you know, I mean I've seen
Speaker 1: women who they would make fun of actresses, I mean
Speaker 1: a comedy Yeah, they would just tear apart. They would
Speaker 1: laceerate actresses who they thought were leaning too much on
Speaker 1: the sex button. And then those comedy actresses became stars
Speaker 1: and they popped another button and they put the makeup
Speaker 1: on their cleavage and they were like and they were
Speaker 1: just like they were camera ready. I mean, they became
Speaker 1: the thing they made fun of. Yeah, and you and
Speaker 1: you realize for women, that's a tough angle, you know,
Speaker 1: comedy and comedy girls tended to grow up being the
Speaker 1: goofy looking you know, the goofy looking ones that weren't
Speaker 1: getting the attention that way. So when they become famous
Speaker 1: and have a lot of my me and people putting
Speaker 1: beautiful dresses on them, I think they go They do
Speaker 1: go that way, you know. I mean, I've got a
Speaker 1: lot of pretty sparkly pants suits I wear to the
Speaker 1: Emmy's now, and I really get up my own ass
Speaker 1: on it because Paula Pell will soon be stepping out
Speaker 1: in those pants for the release of This Is forty,
Speaker 1: a film she helped produce set to open December. This
Speaker 1: is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing