Here’s What Gilda Radner and John Belushi Would Think of ‘SNL’ Today, Says Laraine Newman

Comedy fans love to complain about the current quality of Saturday Night Live, but Laraine Newman believes two of her former castmates would be fans. “Well, I think they’d be amazed,” she told People. “It’s hard to know whether they would have been excited about the evolution of comedy tone, but I think they would be. Both Gilda and John had a very progressive perspective on the world, as well as comedy.”

While much about the show has changed over the past 50 years, the way SNL is assembled from Monday to Saturday night has remained remarkably consistent. “In format, that hasn’t changed,” Newman explained. “The behind-the-scenes function of pitching to the host, assigning sketches, writing all night and preparing for the live show — that’s all the same.”

What’s different? “They have technology that we didn’t have,” she said, although it’s not clear exactly what tech Newman is referring to. As many of the show’s critics lament, the performers still read from hand-written cue cards instead of taking advantage of teleprompters or in-ear help. Perhaps she’s talking about the emergence of digital shorts and other pre-taped sketches — these days, a phone can create videos in minutes that might have taken weeks back in SNL’s early days. 

As for Newman’s other castmates from the early days of Saturday Night Live, she’s still in contact with Bill Murray. “When he’s doing something where he’s bored, he texts me,” she said. “If he’s driving cross-country, we’ll have long text conversations.”

Er, they have long text conversations while Murray is driving? Let’s hope the Groundhog Day star has some kind of talk-to-text feature on his CarPlay. At least the conversations don’t sound too taxing — Newman says they mostly chat about life updates or random nonsense.

What’s Newman’s take on the current show? “I mean, Sarah Sherman on Weekend Update, anything she does is just brilliant,” she told People. “And Bowen Yang, I love him so much, especially when he did the iceberg from the Titanic.”

She’s also a fan of the upcoming film Saturday Night, especially the performance of Emily Fairn as Laraine Newman. “Honored to have this brilliant actor play me,” the real Newman posted on her social feed. “I’ve kept silent after seeing the SNL movie because honestly, I don’t know how to express my feelings on it. I can say it’s thoroughly entertaining — heart pounding — brilliantly written and directed and the actors are all superb.”

Belushi and Radner obviously won’t get to see their movie counterparts, but Newman believes they would be proud of SNL’s five-decade evolution. “I think they would have been really inspired by how the show has grown and changed over the years.”