Catherine O’Hara Was ‘Shocked’ at How Much Good Material Gets Thrown Out at ‘SNL’

Everybody loves Catherine O’Hara (if you don’t, please seek professional help immediately), so it’s no surprise that Saturday Night Live attempted to hire her as a cast member back in the ‘80s, although they lost her after only one week on the job. 

Contrary to rumors, her departure had nothing to do with the inhospitable environment fostered by writer Michael O’Donoghue, she simply left to go back to her SCTV “family” after the iconic Canadian sketch show landed a new deal with NBC. 

But O’Hara did return to host SNL twice in the early ‘90s, and she was surprised to see just how wasteful the show was, comedically speaking.

The Beetlejuice Beetlejuice actress recently guested on Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ podcast Wiser Than Me, and naturally, the subject of SNL came up. Louis-Dreyfus recalled the “grueling” schedule, which was driven by “late-night partying.” O’Hara described how, when she returned to SNL as a host in 1991, she “was shocked at how many good pieces at that read through didn’t make it to the show.”

“I mean good stuff made it,” O’Hara explained, “but so much good material that would get laughs and, it’s just gone then, isn’t it?”

“It’s gone, it’s totally dead.” Louis-Dreyfus agreed. 

When O’Hara questioned this practice, Louis-Dreyfus reasoned that it’s “the culture of the place,” adding that “it stands to reason that good things get lost, because you read so many sketches. I mean, it goes on for hours and hours. It’s a pile two feet high of sketches.”

SCTV, O’Hara pointed out, utilized a vastly different creative process. “We would start writing months before shooting,” she told Louis-Dreyfus. “We would just, sort of, continue writing and shooting all along.” And unlike at SNL, promising pitches weren’t so quickly disposed of. “We would rework stuff over and over, you know? We never gave up on a good idea.”

SCTV and SNL, despite both being popular sketch comedy series, were very different in their respective executions. In addition to the fact that it didn’t air live, SCTV didn’t even shoot in front of a crowd. And that may have been to the show’s benefit. “We never had an audience, so we were just trying to make each other laugh,” O’Hara noted, adding that it was “a thousand times more relaxed” as a result. 

While the anxiety factory that is Saturday Night Live may have led to a number of solid ideas being abandoned instead of nurtured, at least a few “dead” sketches have been exhumed and brought to life in recent years via Seth Meyers “Second Chance Theater.” The Late Night segment stages “sketches that were once cut from Saturday Night Live.” 

But the SNL sketches that were disposed of when O’Hara hosted in the ‘90s weren’t so lucky, and have moved on to comedy Sketch Heaven — or, more likely, comedy Sketch Hell. 

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