5 Famous People Who Were Guest Writers on ‘Saturday Night Live’
Jason Reitman is on a barnstorming tour for Saturday Night, telling everyone about his amazing week in 2008 as an SNL guest writer. Guest writer? How does that work exactly? Do you book a session like an Airbnb? Does Lorne Michaels bring you in like a lecturer in Copenhagen?
Turns out Reitman isn’t alone — the show has had several visiting scribes over the years, including some pretty famous names. Here are five people you likely never knew spent a couple of weeks writing sketches on SNL…
Jason Reitman
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Reitman’s stint at 30 Rock was “one of the greatest weeks of my life,” he told Entertainment Weekly at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. “I was lucky enough to guest write at Saturday Night Live. … Right after Juno, I got the chance to go in and spend one week. I got a sketch on the air.”
Reitman’s three-part sketch was a play on the phrase “Death by chocolate,” featuring host Ashton Kutcher as an anthropomorphic candy bar who murders the innocents. Your mileage may vary on the sketch’s hilarity, but at least it anticipated Kutcher’s 2020s heel turn.
Mindy Kaling
Kaling called working on Saturday Night Live “a childhood dream.” She never reached her goal of becoming a cast member, but she did get a chance to work as a guest writer between the second and third seasons of The Office.
Unlike Reitman’s “greatest week of my life” experience, Kaling’s guest-writing gig was “humiliating,” according to her memoir Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? Almost all of her pitches — like Antonio Banderas meeting up with his identical twin at the Berlin Wall — were greeted with silence at the table reads, says Vulture.
Paul Thomas Anderson
Maya Rudolph met life partner (or however she says it) Paul Thomas Anderson when he spent time as a guest writer on the show.
Funny thing is, the Boogie Nights director was dating SNL musical guest Fiona Apple the week he wrote and directed a short film that aired on the show. The dark parody of MTV’s forgotten FANatic starred Ben Affleck as a weirdo who begs Anna Nicole Smith (Molly Shannon) to be his mommy. As SNL meet-cutes go, this twisted fantasy is going to be an odd one for Maya to explain to the grandchildren.
Kevin McDonald
Just as the Kids in the Hall were breaking into the big-time, Lorne Michaels returned to Canada to check out the up-and-comers. “We got an audition for Saturday Night Live,” McDonald told KITH, but none of the Kids landed the job. (Mark McKinney and Bruce McCulloch wrote for a year before they returned to the group.)
Years later after Kids in the Hall had their successful show, McDonald returned to SNL as a guest writer for 2013’s Melissa McCarthy and Vince Vaughn episodes. “It is a pressure cooker at Saturday Night Live,” he told Phoenix New Times. “You have one day — Tuesday — from 12 o’clock to 5 a.m. to write the sketches. And no one seems pressured. The fact that you’re good enough to be writing sketches is why you’re there on a Tuesday. And if you decide to see it as a pressure cooker, then you’re not going to get anything done. And you probably won’t be there. But once you’re in the loop, that’s all you’re doing and it’s much easier than it sounds.”
Stephen Colbert
In 2015, Colbert reminisced about his time on Saturday Night Live with comic and former SNL intern Wyatt Cenac. The two met at 30 Rock while participating in late-night hallway shenanigans. “I was a guest writer there, and I would jump in on these soccer games,” Colbert said. “It would be like three o’clock in the morning, and people are like on deadline trying to get their scripts done for Saturday. It was Friday night. I was hanging out with Norm (Macdonald) because sometimes I would sit in and write on Weekend Update, and Norm got into a huge fight.”
Macdonald had spent the game jawing with Colin Quinn but got physical with the 19-year-old Cenac after they got caught up in a scrum, requiring Colbert and Quinn to pull the two apart. Turns out Macdonald had just quit smoking and was extra-testy that night.
Colbert retold the story to Cenac when they met up years later at The Daily Show — with Colbert forgetting Cenac was the unlucky kid that Macdonald fought that night.