Laraine Newman Is Loving SNL50—and the Nostalgia It Has Conjured

Laraine Newman rode the rocket that was NBC’s Saturday Night during its first now-legendary season, only gradually becoming aware that this show she’d joined with little to no expectations was breaking into contemporary culture with unimaginable speed and impact.

One particular moment left her with no doubt.

“I was walking through the lobby of 30 Rock on the way to a read-through, and John Lennon passed me and said (she did this in her dead-on version of Lennon’s scouse): ‘Hi, Laraine.’ ”

The memory excites her still. “I swear to God he said, ‘Hi Laraine.’  Not ‘Hi,’ but ‘Hi, Laraine.’ And I was like Lou Costello seeing Frankenstein. Here he was, with Yoko Ono, walking through 30 Rock. I have no idea why they were there. They just walked past me, and John said hello to me. That gave me some idea of the reach of the show.”

Newman recognizes her life changed forever when she became an original cast member of a show that has become legitimately iconic, a part of American culture, a part of American life, for half a century.

“It has presented to each generation individual performers and writers that represent the evolution of what comedy is,” Newman said. “I think that is so exciting. I still watch the show, and I find it so inspiring.”

SNL’s much ballyhooed 50^th anniversary has thrown many of the show’s former players and writers back into the spotlight. Newman is happy to be transported to that time in her life, when as a 22-year-old graduate of a new comedy sketch group she helped found, The Groundlings, she was seen and appreciated by an emerging producer with new ideas about television comedy, Lorne Michaels.

“Lorne had seen me and cast me in a special he did with Lily Tomlin. He came back to The Groundlings and saw me again doing new material and he offered me SNL.”

Newman didn’t have a clue what the show was and no illusions about it being the break of a lifetime. Several other cast members of The Groundlings had turned Michaels down.

“All I knew was it was a commitment for 13 weeks with a five-year option. I remember thinking: ‘like that’ll ever happen.’ I had no expectations at all.”

At least she didn’t have to audition, a process that has unnerved comic performers for generations, particularly because of Michaels’s reputation for rarely laughing during auditions.

In Laraine’s case, he liked what he saw.

“I wouldn’t say I was confident,” Newman said. “But I was confident in Lorne.”

Confident enough to pack up her car in LA, drive across the country with a boyfriend, staying at camps and rest areas, and arrive in New York, raring to start this adventure, relying on all her carefully prepared character material, including costumes.

Her first day in New York, the car was stolen.

“It was devastating,” she said. The worst part was Lorne wanted her to perform essentially an audition for the writing staff to get to know what kind of characters she did. “It was not a great thing for me because I had an absolute terror of auditioning.”

She had to recreate all her bits for this one-person show in front of the writers. “It was so embarrassing,” Newman said. Obviously, she still managed to impress. She was there, on the list of the “Not Ready for Prime Time Players” that appeared on screen for the first time on Oct 11, 1975.

Much of the early uncertainty and excitement of that very first edition of SNL is captured in the recent Jason Reitman film, Saturday Night.

Newman loved it. She said, “Even though the movie itself is a work of pure fiction, it captures the spirit of what specifically Lorne was trying to do. How he was kind of our fearless leader, and even if he wasn’t confident, he made it look like he was. And that went a long way. When I think of Lorne, I think of guts. He was so clear in his vision, so sure of it.”

The film moved her. “I cried at the end. When the actor playing Chevy says, ‘Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night,’ and they play the theme song from our show, that absolutely just killed me. It put me away.”

As for the show’s longevity, Newman credited Michaels again for his awareness that it was essential to keep moving forward, changing casts at critical moments to maintain its fresh appeal to each new generation of viewers.

“I think it’s such an admirable approach,” she said. “People will say to me, oh you were in the best cast, and I say, no. Here’s who the best cast was: whoever was on when you were an adolescent, when you were developing your sense of humor.”

Most of Newman’s work now is in animation, which she loves, because she is given wide range to create more characters–with no auditions necessary.

And she has clearly passed on her comedy skills. Both her children, Spike and Hannah Einbinder, are comics and comedy actors.

Hannah herself auditioned for SNL.  It went typically, Laraine said. “Not one laugh.”

But that was a while ago, before Hannah’s breakthrough on the Max series, Hacks, for which she was Emmy nominated.

Maybe that sets her up for a different role on SNL?

“They should have her host,” Newman said. “She’d be so good at sketch. Oh, I’d love to see her do it.”

Yes, Newman remembers the chaos and craziness among that first group, the heady but explosive burst of fame that was elevating them and overwhelming them at the same time. But half a century on, Newman’s assessment falls well on the plus side:

“For the most part, it was pretty wonderful.”