Julia Louis-Dreyfus is opening up about the time she heard crickets while performing in her early “Saturday Night Live” days.
On a recent episode of her “Wiser Than Me” podcast, the comedian, 63, looked back on a particularly “cringey” experience she had while coming aboard the late-night sketch comedy show.
“When I was just getting started, I was part of The Practical Theatre Company in Chicago,” she said on Wednesday’s episode. “The producers of ‘SNL’ came to see the show, and they loved it, and they hired all of us to come to New York and be a part of ‘SNL.’”
The star of the “Veep” sitcom recalled having to re-create the first act of the show with three “complete and total unknowns” in the “SNL” office “under fluorescent lights in the middle of the day in front of 20 very cynical, unfriendly ‘SNL’ cast members and writers.”
But according to Louis-Dreyfus, the vibes were already askew because “a bunch of the [current ‘SNL’ cast members’] best friends had just been fired to make room for us.”
Claiming that the group “hated” them, she told her podcast guest, Catherine O’Hara, “We never had a chance. Sketches that had killed in Chicago died a terrible, terrible death that day. It was excruciating.”
Louis-Dreyfus then admitted she thinks the “humiliation influenced our whole ‘SNL’ experience for the next couple of years.”
She added, “I’ve learned a lot since that cringey day in a carpeted office on the 17th floor of 30 Rock.”
Louis-Dreyfus joined the cast for the eighth season of “SNL” in 1982 at age 21, making her the show’s youngest female cast member ever at the time, according to Variety.
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Despite her rocky start at “SNL,” the “Seinfeld” alum got candid with late-night host Stephen Colbert about the crucial lesson she learned on the long-running show, which she called “very sexist.”
“I learned I wasn’t going to do any more of this show business crap unless it was fun,” she told Colbert at a fundraiser for Montclair Film in 2019. “I don’t have to walk and crawl through this kind of nasty glass if it’s not ultimately going to be fulfilling, and so that’s how I sort of moved forward from that [‘SNL’ experience].”
She added, “I sort of applied the fun-meter to every job since, and that has been very helpful.”
Listen to Louis-Dreyfus’ interview with O’Hara below.
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