For every hit Saturday Night Live sketch (Domingo, anyone?), there are plenty more that don’t even make it to air. It’s happened to the best of SNL cast members—just ask Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig.
Speaking at a Vulture Festival panel on Saturday, the duo reflected on “The Australians,” a sketch that was cut from the show—twice. While Hader still maintains that “The Australians” (not to be confused with “The Californians”) was “hilarious,” he and Wiig are well-aware that nobody else enjoyed it other than their pal and co-star in the sketch, Fred Armisen.
“We did this thing called ‘The Australians’ with Fred Armisen that no one liked,” Hader said. “The sketch played to such silence that I remember I could hear the props rustling.”
“Even the premise will probably get a groan,” Wiig chimed in. “The entire sketch was [us] putting items into a suitcase and then zipping it closed. And then we would say, [in Australian accents] ‘All right. Here we go. Off to New Zealand!’”
This isn’t the first time an SNL alum has discussed “The Australians.” During an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers last year, Armisen addressed the never-seen sketch, which made it all the way to dress rehearsal twice before ultimately getting axed.
“My reflection of it is, it was very patently clear about halfway through the sketch that it was not going well,” Seth Meyers recalled, as the sketch was put up when he was still with the show. “And then the three of you [Armisen, Hader, and Wiig] would just start enjoying it even more. … You were really having just as much fun when things were going badly.”
Hader echoed a similar sentiment during Saturday’s panel. “I think there is a thing when you’re working in that environment for so long that you are able to kind of fail in front of each other,” he said, referring to his time on SNL with Wiig. “You have each other’s back. You’ve seen each other kind of eat it so many times. You’ve seen each other hit huge highs, huge lows. So you’re just incredibly comfortable with each other.”
“There’s, like, a looseness when we would do sketches together,” Wiig agreed. “We don’t really get to improvise when we’re doing sketches. It’s pretty much reading what’s on the card. But I think there is something very, I don’t know … ‘Silly’ is the word that’s coming to mind.”
Hader and Wiig initially joined SNL as featured players for Season 31 in 2005, entering the cast alongside then-newcomers Andy Samberg and Jason Sudeikis. Wiig departed the show in 2012, with Hader exiting a year later. In 2014, the duo co-starred in the comedy-drama film The Skeleton Twins—the Vulture panel was held in celebration of the film’s 10th anniversary.
