It’s a moment that’s left Saturday Night Live viewers scratching their heads for nearly a decade. Now Jon Rudnitsky is detailing exactly what happened when he showed up late for a sketch as it aired on live TV.
The missed cue came in the Season 41 sketch “Space Pants” (aka “Mafia Meeting”), which was mounted for SNL‘s April 2, 2016 episode hosted by Peter Dinklage.
The sketch was to begin with two mobsters, played by Rudnitsky and Pete Davidson, sitting down at a club with a pair of higher-level mafiosos (Beck Bennett, Bobby Moynihan) to discuss money they owe. After a tense exchange between the gangsters, Peter Dinklage appears on the club’s stage to debut a new-wave futuristic number called “Space Pants,” while donning the song’s titular pants. The mobsters can’t help but be distracted by the song, which they eventually grow to love as musical guest Gwen Stefani joins Dinklage onstage.
Though “Space Pants” is fondly remembered by SNL fans, the sketch began with one of the more glaring flubs of the show’s legendary 50 seasons.
“You two boys are hard to track down,” Moynihan’s mob boss says as Davidson enters. Rudnitsky—the second “boy”—is nowhere to be seen. Davidson delivers his first line alongside an empty chair where Rudnitsky is supposed to be sitting, perhaps even taking on one of the absent cast member’s lines. As the camera cuts to Moynihan for his lines, some shuffling ensues off-camera. When it cuts back, Rudnitsky is in his chair.
“Where were you?” Moynihan adlibs in character before the group carries on with the scene.
For years, fans have wondered what exactly happened in that moment: why wasn’t Rudnitsky there for the opening of the sketch? For the first time, the former SNL cast member is sharing his side of the story
“It’s because I’m an idiot,” Rudnitsky told LateNighter’s podcast partner Saturday Night Network this week in a new episode of the SNN series, SNL Stories.
According to Rudnitsky, he had been ready for the sketch. “I was fully in wardrobe, in my wig and everything,” he recalled. “I’m sitting by the monitor. I’m by the wardrobe… I just never heard my name get called. In fact, I was standing next to Vanessa [Bayer] and Leslie [Jones], and they didn’t tap me or anything. Nobody from wardrobe… [who] were sitting right next to me.”
The former SNL player added that he’d let his guard down, assuming the show was headed into a commercial break.
“Normally, the show goes from a pre-tape into an actual commercial… Very rare do you see three sketches in a row. I just figured, ‘Oh, it’s a commercial break now.’ So I’m watching. I’m just enjoying the show,” he recounted. “[Then] I see the ‘Space Pants’ sketch start.”
Rudnitsky recalled thinking “Oh, f*ck!” as he watched Davidson entering the sketch alone on the monitor. “I ran across the studio floor,” he said, explaining that stage manager Chris Kelly stopped him from entering the scene until the control room cut away to Moynihan’s character.
Rudnitsky knew his flub would leave viewers scratching their heads. “I’m sure people were thinking like, ‘Oh this is gonna be a sketch about a guy who’s late a lot?’ and then it goes off into Space Pants land,” he said.
After the sketch, Rudnitsky sought solace from Kenan Thompson, who Rudnitsky said could always be counted on for comfort. “Kenan is the best guy in the whole world,” Rudnitsky said. “No matter how nervous I was, or how much everyone is dealing with their own sh*t… Anytime I see him, he’s like big hugs, and he’s like, ‘You’re doing great man.’”
But Thompson didn’t sugarcoat things when it came to “Space Pants.”
“That’s happened before, right?” Rudnitsky asked Thompson after the live flub.
“Yeah… Not like that, man,” Thompson told him.
In fact, Rudnitsky remains open to the possibility that the glaring error led to his dismissal from the show after just one season.
“This is probably where I lost my job,” Rudnitsky quipped to the SNN before reconsidering. “There are several reasons I can think of that I got fired. Most of them is that I bombed almost every table read. That will do it, if you don’t show up and do the job. I think also I brought too many of my friends from New Jersey and my mom to every afterparty.”
Rudnitsky went on to reveal that after the sketch, he extended his apologies to Lorne Michaels. “I went up to Lorne at that afterparty, and he didn’t really make eye contact with me,” said Rudnitsky. “But to be honest, he never really made eye contact with me.”
Though Rudnitsky wasn’t long for SNL, he’s kept up a busy slate of onscreen appearances and voice roles since departing the legendary sketch show. He was most recently seen in the films Red One and Our Little Secret. He also returned to the world of SNL for the SNL50 celebrations this past February—an experience he described as “nothing but joy and gratitude for getting to be there. I felt so lucky.”
The Saturday Night Network’s full interview with Rudnitsky can be viewed below and is available on all podcast platforms.
