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Saturday Night Live turns 50 this year. A sketch-comedy moon shot launched by a scruffy band of Canadians and stoners has become a pop-cultural institution—the longest-running scripted show on TV that isn’t a soap opera or Sesame Street. Late last year, to mark this historic anniversary, GQ interviewed over 50 other past and present SNL cast members—from original Not Ready For Primetime Players like Laraine Newman, Jane Curtin, and Garrett Morris to newcomers like Ashley Padilla, Jane Wickline, and Emil Wakim, each of whom had been on the show for all of eight weeks when we talked—and asked each of them the same eight questions about the show’s broader cultural footprint and their own experiences making it.
A feature story drawn from those conversations, “Saturday Night Forever,” will appear in the March print edition of GQ—but all this week on GQ.com, we’re bringing you an expanded, Bill Brasky–size version of that story, along with anecdotes and recollections that didn’t make it to the page. And we’re kicking it off today with the cast’s answers to two questions, including one that almost everyone found impossible to answer.
Which era of SNL do you think had the all-time greatest cast, and why?
Chris Rock, cast member, 1990–93: The original cast was the best.
Joe Piscopo, cast member, 1980–84: First cast, original cast. Never before. Never since. Best cast ever. Television history. No one’s matched it. Not marginally. It was the Beatles, it was Frank Sinatra. And then all of us tried to do the best we could. And some of us had some really great moments.
Tim Kazurinsky, cast member, 1980–84: They could have ended this series after the first five years. That first cast was untouchable.
Kenan Thompson, cast member, 2003–present: They made a foundation to build on. A foundation of freedom, creativity, really funny performance and smart material. Dan Aykroyd used to do some wild runs.
Dana Carvey, cast member, 1986–93: They were just rock stars and badass pirates. When I got the show, I didn’t really feel I belonged. Aykroyd, Bill Murray—they were all over six feet tall. Belushi obviously could beat you up or hit you. And Chevy was six four. So I just felt like they could make you laugh or beat you up. So when I came in with Phil Hartman, God rest his soul, and Jan Hooks and everybody, I didn’t really have any sense of thinking we could do anything like that. I pretty much thought the plug would be pulled on the show when I was on it.
But from ’90 to ’93, we still had Phil Hartman and Mike Myers, and then we added in what we used to call the junior varsity: Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, David Spade, Tim Meadows, Ellen Cleghorne. The show had an inordinate amount of firepower, if it’s a military analogy. When those guys were coming into their own and we still had the other team who’d been there a while, it was pretty magic to be there.
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