Bombing in front of an audience is an occupational hazard at Saturday Night Live. But if you’re going to do it at one of the show’s highest-rated episodes ever, it helps to have someone as cool as Josh Brolin by your side.
That was the case for Bill Hader in 2008, when Sarah Palin made her infamous cameo appearance on the show, which Hader had to immediately follow with a dud of a sketch called “Fart Face.” The former SNL cast member relayed the story to Ted Danson on a new episode of Where Everybody Knows Your Name, and it’s clear the actor/comedian has at least walked away from the story with some quotable memories.
In the workplace-set sketch, Hader’s character calls his colleague (Will Forte) a “fart face,” then encourages Brolin’s character to do the same. Eventually, the tables turn, and Brolin becomes the “fart face.” Brolin ends up in tears at the name-calling, which Hader and Forte take aggressively over the top—until the sketch reaches a particularly dark ending.
“We did it at dress. It played to absolute silence. I could hear my footfalls,” Hader recalled. “It was one of those awful feelings… You could hear yourself breathing on the stage because it’s just bombing so bad.”
Hader and Brolin assumed the sketch’s chances of seeing the live show were DOA, but the man at the top had other plans.
“Lorne Michaels, I don’t know why, took a real shine to it,” Hader said. “We went into the meeting and he had somehow moved it up [to air] right after ‘Update.'”
Hader also recounted a great Michaels quote from the post-dress meeting, from when he was giving notes on the show’s dress rehearsal run: “I saw a boom shadow in ‘Fart Face.'”
The “Weekend Update” that preceded the sketch would go on to become one of SNL‘s most infamous, featuring a cameo from then-vice presidential candidate Palin alongside Amy Poehler.
“The audience was so hot. They were going out of their minds,” Hader explained. “The whole show up to this point has been just fireworks. And we know we’re gonna blow it.”
He and Brolin felt like lambs headed for the slaughter as they approached their sketch. “It was like the end of The Wild Bunch. Like: We’re going to die,” he joked.
Amidst the audience’s uproarious laughter as the Palin appearance ended, Brolin left Hader with a unique motivational quip: “Let’s shut these f**kers up.”
Indeed, the sketch died just as hard on the live show. On the bright side, Hader got a memorable story out of it—and SNL fans can now rewatch the sketch with a new appreciation (even if you don’t laugh).
