Trust the Audience and the Comedy Will Follow: A Conversation with ‘Saturday Night Live’ Co-Head Writers Kent Sublette and Streeter Seidell

It’s hard to believe that Saturday Night Live (SNL) recently wrapped it’s 51^st season. That’s a lot of trust and belief in comedy across decades, brought straight to your TV in your living room (or wherever you watch your programs). And it’s safe to say, the phrase “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” never ceases to get old.

The show has evolved over its decades on air, all the while giving soon-to-be comedy giants their first break to pushing live TV boundaries and making history. It’s no easy feat to put up a show each week, and live nonetheless in front of an in-person audience and those watching from their living rooms (or wherever they may be watching their programs).

The show's head writers, Erik Kenward, Alison Gates, Kent Sublette and Streeter Seidell are doing a lot of heavy lifting behind the scenes before the show goes live. Co-Head writers Kent Sublette and Streeter Seidell shared with Script a behind-the-scenes process of creating an SNL episode, to understanding the host’s preferences, the challenges of topical humor, and the collaborative effort between writers, producers and key department heads. Plus, they discuss the significance of audience feedback during dress rehearsals, and the unique dynamics of working with guest host Ryan Gosling.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: Big picture question – for those who aren't familiar of the inner workings of what you guys do at SNL as head writers, what are your individual and shared responsibilities day to day before the show goes up on Saturday?

Kent Sublette: In the beginning of the week we will assess who's hosting this week, and meet with the producers. The talent department will have talked to the host and [ask], ‘Does he or she have any ideas that they really want to do, or things they don't want to do?’ We’ll take that into account, and sometimes the host will come in with a fully formed sketch idea, and sometimes they've written parts of it - then we'll assign a writer to help them write it…

And then you just take in how has the show been? Who was light last week? ‘Oh, this person in the cast, their thing sadly got cut.’ So let's try to make sure that we write for them this week, so that they have an opportunity - and we're always looking out for everybody in the cast.

Streeter Seidell: I would say that the beginning of the week, at least, is a lot of balancing, as Kent said, the host needs and wants for what they want to do on the show, but also interfacing with the cast. And a lot of times the cast has an idea that they'll want to do, so you're trying to marry those two things - like what could the host do in this cast member's sketch idea, how could that be fun, because most of the time the host isn't going to want to do a sketch where they're not really doing anything.

And then there's your own personal ideas as a writer too. So then you're trying to think, well, what do I want to write? What would be fun for me to do this week? But then, as head writers, we're also, hearing pitches from all of our writers as well, who are coming in with their own ideas, so it's a lot of just collecting all these ideas.

It's probably around, I don't know, Kent, what do you think, 70-75 ideas, of which 50 will get written on Tuesday night, of which we'll read 40. And the producers do that. They're the ones who kind of cull the list down to what we're going to read, and it's not always because of quality or anything. Sometimes it's just two writers had a very similar idea, and this one maybe just had a little something extra going or maybe a better part for the host, so that's why we read that one.

Kent: We also have the topical element to take care of - what's going on this week in the world. Sometimes it's obvious, like there's a debate, and sometimes you don't really know what's going to happen until Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, God forbid Saturday. [laughs]

Streeter: A couple of times this season we've written the cold open on Saturday afternoon because something's happened in the news, and it's like, OK, throw out whatever we had, and what set can we get. That's when it's as crazy as it could be, I would say.

Sadie: That is wild. How far in advance do you guys get a heads up on who your special guest will be, so that you guys can start preparing for that, if at all?

Streeter: Sometimes it's a few months out. Sometimes people will commit pretty early, and then sometimes it's truly like, the week before.

Kent: Yeah, that doesn't happen that often. Usually, if you're starting a week, a chunk of shows, like, we'll do three or four or five in a row, you kind of usually know who those three or that group of people are.

In terms of preparing, you're so focused on what this week is, you might be like, ‘Oh, that might be good for this person, let's remember in two weeks that thing we talked about,’ and sometimes you remember it, and sometimes you forget it. But in terms of preparing or working on the week that you're not in that is not personally something that I find myself doing that often.

Streeter: Yeah, I always pretend I'm gonna do that, just like I pretend in the summer, ‘I'm gonna sit here and I'm gonna write two sketches a week all summer,’ and I've never done it. [laughs]

Kent: That’s a horrible idea. [laughs]

Sadie: [laughs] Your returning guest host, Ryan Gosling, he has very specific comedic sensibilities, and great comedic timing. And what’s so enjoyable about watching his episodes, especially this season’s episode, is the dead giveaway in his eyes that you know the joke is going to work, and as an audience member, there’s this anticipation of wanting to hear the bit. Do you and the writers take advantage of that now in what you write for him?

Streeter: I think what's so fun about Gosling, in particular, and I think what you're talking about, seeing his eyes kind of light up, is that you can tell he's having fun, and it makes everyone around him have fun. And then it feels like, as a viewer, everyone's having fun.

I don’t know what's gonna break him, you know? You take your best guess, but he's not shy about giggling. He's not doing it on purpose. He's honestly trying not to laugh, but I think he just finds it all so delightful and silly that he can't help it.

We try to give him, like, for instance, the “Passing Notes” sketch that we did in that episode that had been an idea before, Ashley Padilla and Mikey Day had had kind of come up with that and come to Alison Gates and I and Kent to kind of work on it. And we held that one for Gosling because we're like, A, I think he'll be down to not know what he's about to read, and, B, I think he'll find it fun - he'll find the danger of it fun, not stressful. And he definitely did, and you could just see that he's having a blast. So, there are those considerations with someone like Gosling.

Kent: Yeah, he's also really smart about comedy, so during the week there'll be lots of discussion about things like, ‘Should it be this? Should it be that?’ almost like in a very analytical way. But then when it becomes time to perform it, he flips over into that mode and just has the best time with it, which is really a cool thing. I think that is part of his talent, obviously, but also, he's done it a few times, and trusts it, and trusts himself, and trusts the show.

Sadie: Two sketches stuck out to me from his episode, “Monty McTreats & The Pastry Bakery” and “Cyclops” - two widely different comedy choices, obviously, but both land so brilliantly, and it’s tapping into the wheelhouse of what he can do. While “Cyclops” is shot live on stage, that’s a little easier to get up and going, but what was the turnaround process for the McTreats episode?

Kent: You wrote those both with Mikey, right?

Streeter: Yeah. The turnaround time on “Monty McTreats” was, I think, about 11 years, [laughs]… We had been trying to do that one for so long, and we had submitted it a few times in the past with different hosts, and then truly just like didn't read it, didn't think about it for maybe eight seasons. But every time Ryan has come around, he's kind of given Mikey and I just a gift, like the last time, he did this Beavis and Butt-Head one that we had wanted to do for a long time, and he just can take these kind of white whale ideas of ours and make them real. So we were like why not, let's try it with “Monty McTreats.”

Kent: Did you ever do it live?

Streeter: We had written it live, and then there was so much… it had almost gotten picked a few times, and there were so many things that could go wrong if it's live, that given our age and wisdom, now we're like, ‘let's do it on tape,’ and then Ryan doesn't have to sing it and act live, we can shoot it. It was such a dream to just see it happen and come to life finally. But now we're out of old ideas. [laughs] I don't know if Gosling comes by again, I don't know what we have for him. [laughs]

Kent: Eventually, all your old ideas, you run out of them, which is scary. [laughs]

Streeter: I like to think we saved them for him. He's our prince. He'll get behind a super weird idea from Mikey and I, and won't question the idea, and just be like, ‘What do you want and how can I make it special?’ That's why we love him so much.

Sadie: And on the flipside of that, the “Cyclops” sketch – a great performance and comedic timing. So little is said but the laughs are there and I’m just thinking, ‘Oh poor, Ashley. You’ll make it through this!’ It's fantastic.

Streeter: Both Ryan and Mikey were just absolute menaces during that sketch. None of those things were scripted. There was maybe one or two “cross toward” and “come back” - but I think they were doing it at dress and having so much fun that when it came to air, ‘We can do even more now.’ [laughs]

Sadie: You guys have been doing this for a long time by now, and obviously you're taking a lot into consideration the topical pop culture and current events to implement into the show, but I’m curious how much are you also thinking about the audience and their relation to the material?

Kent: Yeah, I think we're lucky that we have a staff that has a very wide range of interests - some people are musical theater, some people are stand-ups, or some people are really into reality TV. There’s all these different things that people are really into that sort of mirrors, I think, what the audience wants to see in a nice way.

But we do also say someone [who is] 25 will write something, and I’m like, ‘I don't know what the hell that is,’ but people are laughing, so we're gonna put it on, you know what I mean? [laughs] Like, you find yourself fighting for things that are maybe not for you… So we try to just run the gamut. But we’re aware of oh, this is a thing that people care about and are talking about now, and this thing is trying to reflect that, so let's give that a chance.

Streeter: I always feel like if I really like every single sketch in the show, it's almost a bad thing, because that means there's someone who has a different sense of humor who absolutely hated every sketch in the show. There was nothing for them.

And what's so nice about our show, too, we have a dress rehearsal with that audience, and they tell you the truth. You can't really stand there and say your thing was super funny if no one liked. You get pretty good at just accepting when you were wrong, and you thought something's funny, and the audience just said ‘no,’ and you just have to kind of move on and not let it ruin you. [laughs] It’s nice to have that honest audience, as opposed to a show that's taped or something, and you do your best you can with it, and then you send it out into the world, and the feedback trickles in. We're getting that feedback right away in real time.

Kent: And we do a read through on Wednesday, and it's a different audience, that's an audience of people that work there, and a piece can crush, and you're like, ‘Oh my god, this is the best thing that's ever gonna be on TV.’ And then that dress rehearsal audience is like, ‘No, don't like it.’ [laughs]

Sadie: How early on in the writing process do you bring other key department heads, like the costume designers, makeup artists, production designers? And do they ever pitch ideas of or are just bluntly honest ‘Hey, we can’t do this’ or conversely, ‘We can make this better if we can X, Y, Z.’  

Streeter: We're lucky to work with, I truly feel like, the best in the biz across all those departments. They're in as soon as the show is picked on Wednesday night, as soon as we know what sketches we're going to do, you talk to them right away. And you can tell them, ‘Here's what I was thinking.’ Oftentimes, they'll be like, ‘Let me make that better for you,’ because this is what they do, they're so good at it, and they will have their own thoughts, but it's definitely a conversation.

Everyone's trying to service the sketch and that idea, so each department is going to bring their own expertise. And I think they honestly like the challenge, especially the set designers, they're always like, ‘What if the ship moved? Would that be fun for you guys?’ [laughs] They're kind of going above and beyond to over deliver a lot of times all those guys. So it's great to have your ideas supported…

Catch Season 51 of Saturday Night Live streaming on Peacock.