Connor Storrie came more prepared to Saturday Night Live than most hosts: He brought his own material.
The Heated Rivalry star used his hosting debut to bring a character he penned, pre-SNL, to your TV screen.
The sketch in question? “Stripper,” which pits Storrie as a stripper who arrives at a bachelorette party fresh from being in a car accident. Dressed as a plumber, Storrie’s stripper character arrives bloodied and broken-limbed, attempting to fight through the pain and perform his routine for the gaggle of ladies (Ashley Padilla, Sarah Sherman, Veronika Slowikowska, and Jane Wickline). After using his prop plunger to help him crawl across the floor, Storrie is ultimately undressed to just his underwear before straddling Sherman’s shoulders.
The sketch drew raucous cheers from the in-studio audience, and it’s possible some of those may have been cheers of recognition from Storrie superfans. Since shooting to fame in Heated Rivalry, video of Storrie’s previous work has made the rounds online, including an earlier staging of the injured stripper character.
It hails from Storrie’s work in Los Angeles’ clowning and improv comedy scenes, which the actor has been a part of for the past several years. Storrie even discussed the character in a December interview with Vulture, citing it as his most recent clown work. “It’s almost so hyperbolic that you can’t help but laugh,” he explained. “It’s like, I’m not having fun, so you’re having fun.”
“I come in trying to be all sexy, but all of my limbs are broken,” he later recalled of the character to Cultured.
It’s unclear exactly how much of Storrie’s original premise made it into the final version seen on SNL on Saturday, but video and photos show that the original version did include the plunger crawl and Storrie’s eventual stripping (albeit with less broadcast-safe underwear).
One difference: The SNL version was set in a Las Vegas hotel suite, while Storrie’s version involved a party bus. “[I] got hit by the party bus that I’m supposed to strip on,” he told Vulture. Storrie’s character also donned a neck brace in the original version.
Though the premise was the actor’s concept, the version that aired passed through the show’s writers’ room as usual, with SNL scribes Jimmy Fowlie, Alison Gates, Allie Levitan, and Maddie Wiener all co-writing the final piece.
While SNL hosts typically leave the writing to the show’s team, they have contributed their own material to varying degrees over the years—though few have actually staged their work before getting to Studio 8H. And it isn’t the first time a host has brought a concept to the show this season. Nikki Glaser brought the idea of “Hudsacilin” to SNL before collaborating with the writers. Bad Bunny did the same for “El Chavo Del Ocho,” and Alexander Skarsgård co-wrote “The Viking Raid.”
