This Rejected Will Ferrell ‘SNL’ Sketch Sounds Funnier Than Anything From Recent Seasons
Will Ferrell and Harper Steele are making the rounds promoting their new documentary Will & Harper, stopping by to catch up with old SNL co-worker Seth Meyers. The former Saturday Night Live compatriots took the opportunity to talk about some of their most spectacular misses on the show.
“Harper, you wrote some of my favorite things at SNL,” said Meyers, “but you probably had some wonderful failures.”
“Oh my God,” Steele replied. “More failures than successes, yes.”
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When Meyers asked the friends if they had an old sketch they wished could be revived, Ferrell and Steele arrived at a consensus: Unicorn Mountain.
It’s a sketch that got rejected multiple times in multiple iterations over the years. “The way we wrote it — because we did this a few times, by the way, it never worked — I would write a half and then hand it to Will, and then he would write the second half,” Steele explained. “And then we would just reveal what we did at the read-through.”
That’s one way to guarantee a surprise. In one iteration, Ferrell wrote a five-page song introducing a kids’ show called Unicorn Mountain. “Incredibly long,” said Steele. “And it was the unicorns are free and they’re friendly and they love everyone.”
That’s the set-up. The payoff that got revealed at the pitch session? “And then my half, we open on Unicorn Mountain, and Tracy Morgan and Will are eating a unicorn,” said Steele to raucous laughter from the Late Night with Seth Meyers crowd. “Talking about how easy it was to catch them.”
The easily captured, unsuspecting unicorn “faces were so sweet,” giggled Ferrell. “They had no idea.”
“Do you hear this laughter, Lorne Michaels?” Steele asked the SNL producer, presumably roaming the 30 Rock halls elsewhere in the building.
“Lorne!” shouted Ferrell. “Why did you cut this?”
It’s a fair question, considering the massive amount of mediocre sketches that make it to air each week. Maybe Michaels can revive it for the season opener? Or perhaps wait until the inevitable Ferrell hosting effort this season.
SNL could also revive another Steele bit never intended for air. When she wrote for the show, her office was next to one occupied by Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph and writer Emily Spivey. “We have these giant, big windows here in 30 Rock,” Steele explained. “And I made this little character 17 floors up who would knock on their window. And he was perverted. He was a creep.”
Creepy character Rupert was a crudely drawn face attached to a long pole. Steele would extend Rupert out the window of her office to tap on the one belonging to Poehler, Rudolph and Spivey. “I would bang on the window,” Steele confessed. “And then there was a thought bubble coming out of his head, like, ‘God, I want to get in there and check those boobies out.’”
The women would yell and charge into Steele’s office. “I had to pull the thing back and get on my computer,” she said, miming typing motions to suggest she was in the middle of a big sketch.
Meyers laughed remembering Steele pulling off the prank in the middle of winter. It was a dead giveaway when Poehler and company arrived and “your office would be freezing.”
