Five minutes. That’s how long Saturday Night Live auditions last.
The high-stakes audition process for the sketch show, which celebrates its 50th anniversary on Feb. 16, is notorious in its own right. Comedians and writers who want to make it on SNL perform their best bits, characters, and impressions for a chance at stardom.
In an episode of the four-part docuseries SNL 50: Beyond Saturday Night, out now on Peacock, longtime SNL producers lift the curtain on the audition process. The episode, “Five Minutes,” features SNL alums watching their audition tapes and reflecting on what it was like to prepare for that all-important moment.
We see Tracy Morgan laugh hysterically while watching his tape, in which he pretended to be a little boy named Biscuit reading a Christmas poem while decked out in a rainbow beanie hat with a propeller on top. Bobby Moynihan is in disbelief watching his younger self in a rugby polo shirt and jeans slapping his booty repeatedly. Bowen Yang literally screams when he sees footage of his younger self. Part of his audition was meta; he pretended to be an actor auditioning to be the choking victim on posters all over restaurants.
Celebrity impersonations—a fixture of SNL—work when they bring something unexpected to the table, producer Lindsay Shookus explains in SNL 50. For example, Bill Hader pretended to be Al Pacino losing his mind over a cantaloupe. Kate McKinnon pretended to be Penelope Cruz advertising a L’Oréal moisturizer while moving seductively around a chair. And Kenan Thompson had won over producer Michael Shoemaker with his Bill Cosby impersonation and the shrill way he produced the name of Cosby’s wife Camille.
Many bits that comedians used in their auditions have ended up as iconic Saturday Night Live sketches, from Kristen Wiig’s overzealous Target clerk to Ana Gasteyer’s smooth operator voice, which landed her a role as a radio host…
