Slide down, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Steven Seagal, and Milton Berle—Saturday Night Live‘s most notorious club has a newly revealed member.
Numerous allegations of sexual abuse have given us all plenty of reasons to hate Sean “Diddy” Combs. Now Ana Gasteyer is revealing why insiders at Saturday Night Live were ahead of the curve.
Appearing on Bowen Yang‘s Las Culturistas podcast, the late ’90s/early 2000s SNL alum shared that Diddy insisted on a closed set for rehearsals, not winning any fans among the show’s cast and crew. He was the musical guest on the Season 23 finale, hosted by David Duchovny.
“You can tell the five a**holes in the six years that I was there, when they would be like, ‘So-and-so’s in the building. Everybody stay in your dressing rooms,'” Gasteyer explained. “Which is applicable if you’re a presidential candidate, but apart from that, really, it’s my house.”
Playing backed by both orchestra and Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, the rapper then known as “Puff Daddy” was rehearsing “Come With Me” in the shut-off studio.
Gasteyer’s castmate Will Ferrell, who made a habit of dressing up as characters in the writers’ room, was dressed at the writers’ table as an obnoxious persona named Ron.
“He would stay in character for like the whole week,” Gasteyer explained. “They were like, ‘Wouldn’t it be so funny if Ron just went in?’ And he did.”
Ferrell sprinted downstairs to Studio 8H. “And I have the video, from the control room,” Gasteyer added.
“Ron” not only walked into the closed studio, he walked right up on stage with Diddy.
Gastayer explained how Ron was supposed to be SNL director Jim Signorelli’s former director of photography that he’d fired. Signorelli would film commercial parodies and other pre-tapes for the show in the pre-Lonely Island days.
“Ron’s walking around, looking really disoriented, and looking for Jim,” Gasteyer said. “He’s like, ‘Have you seen Jim Signorelli?'”
“It is the greatest thing that’s ever happened, because what a deserved person to have their ‘Kashmir’ moment interrupted by Ron,” Gasteyer said (Diddy’s single that he was performing, off the 1998 Godzilla movie soundtrack, sampled Zeppelin’s “Kashmir”).
“And he really did not roll with it. He was very uncomfortable,” Gasteyer continued. “But it was also just the artifice of all that faux importance.”
Las Culturistas co-host Matt Rogers went on to share his guest’s exasperation with Diddy’s behavior during the rapper’s pop culture dominance. “It was always weird. Like if you go back and watch Making the Band, the way that he treats people is so crazy” and “absurd,” Rogers said.
“You wouldn’t believe how they talked to us in the ’90s,” Gasteyer added. “The mind bend is like, every now and then I look back, and I’m like, ‘Wow.’ Like the things that we endured. But I mean, whatever, it all evolves, and thank God for you guys and your generation.”
Back in 2020, Ferrell shared his own fond recollection of his prank, without calling out Diddy’s behavior so specifically. He also shared the video of his Ron prank performance.
A voice that sounds like Gasteyer is heard in the clip, asking Ron what he thought of Diddy.
“I’m not familiar. He seemed fine,” the monotone Ron responded.
Ferrell also showed up as Ron in the show’s goodnights that week.
You can watch and listen to the full Ana Gasteyer episode of Las Culturistas above or on your favorite podcast provider, and watch Ferrell’s version of the tale here:
