This week’s Saturday Night Live promo features a treasured prop that was cut from the show—and a rare glimpse at the failed sketch.
The promo brings together Sarah Sherman and host Mikey Madison for a hang in Sherman’s dressing room, which results in the Anora actress spotting an odd item made in her likeness.
“The Anora Menorah! We used it in a sketch that got cut,” Sherman explains. As one might glean from that name, the prop is a seven-branched candle built into a sculpture of a bikini-clad Anora—Madison’s character from the Oscar-winning film of the same name.
“Did people think it was funny?” Madison asks Sherman in the promo.
The question triggers a flashback for Sherman, as viewers are treated to a clip from the sketch’s dress rehearsal flop. Andrew Dismukes is shown holding the object, announcing the words “Anora Menorah” to apparent silence from the studio audience (and one cough).
Indeed, the “Anora Menorah” figured in a real sketch cut from SNL’s December 21st episode hosted by Martin Short. Sherman first revealed the sketch during an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers in January, where she brought out the prop and gave it a proper broadcast debut.
Sherman explained that writer Jake Nordwind had come up with the idea of the menorah for a Hannukah sketch during the holiday show. She and Nordwind penned the sketch, but as Sherman recalls in the new promo, it didn’t survive past dress rehearsal.
“I would say one pervert in the audience laughed,” Sherman told Seth Meyers of the menorah’s first appearance in the SNL sketch. “And believe it or not, it was kind of a downhill spiral from there.”
Not wanting to let go of the prop, Sherman told Meyers she intended to display it in her dressing room.
Several weeks later, Meyers revealed the menorah to Madison when she guested on Late Night. “We wanted to bring the prop back out, because we heard you were a fan,” Meyers told her.
“Why would it bomb?” Madison wondered of the sketch, adding that seeing the Anora Menorah was more exciting than her Best Actress Oscar nomination.
Madison wound up winning for Best Actress at this month’s Academy Awards, which also saw Anora win Best Picture. The Anora Menorah, of course, didn’t fair quite as well. Nor does the new idea Sherman presents to Madison in the promo: the Anora Fedora.
Madison hosts SNL with musical guest Morgan Wallen this Saturday, March 29 on NBC.
