The Lonely Island Beginnings

This episode is brought to you by Airbnb. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com slash host. Hey, everybody, my name is Seth Meyers, and it's very exciting, this is the first episode of a new podcast that I'm doing with three very old friends of mine, and earlier today they sent me this intro and asked me to read it word for word, as they wrote it. In 2005,, three gentlemen arrived in New York City not just to change the fortunes of Saturday Night Live, but to change the course of comedy history.

That's how we wrote it.

That's how we wrote it. We don't play by anybody's rules.

Thank you for getting it typo correct.

It's The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast.

I agree.

And you had a really nice thing going for you. You showed up and you knew each other.

Can I just interject before we really get into the meat and potatoes of this?

Yeah, but can you just introduce yourself?

It's me, Andy Samberg from The Lonely Island. Okay, great. Seth Meyers' former castmate.

Thank you.

I just want to say, before we get going, shouldn't we like celebrate a little that we're starting like a huge podcast together and, like hoorah, a little bit on the MIC?

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a really good call.

Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa. We'll add that later.

Yeah. It's just nice to see you guys' faces.

and then for no one else to see us.

You guys don't want to be like, yeah!

Well. It's the first podcast!

Yeah!

You've had the least enthusiasm for this in all the planning and now, immediately, you're coming up.

I've never wanted to do this. I'm just saying now that we're forcing people to listen, should we make it kind of fun? Like, hey, welcome to the party, motherfucker, yeah!

And a hoo-ride?

Yeah, we got a hoo-ride.

Yeah, all right. A little bit more morning radio, kind of energy. Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa.

Welcome back to Four Shock Jocks.

All right, we should note that we have not figured out the name for this podcast yet, but Jorma is pushing very hard that it should be Four Shock Jocks.

I have figured it out. It's called Four Shock Jocks.

Tell us why you like the name.

Yeah, well, Andy, all the other names were taken. It's because this thing plays sound effects, that's why.

What is it that you have that plays sound effects?

You have it in front of you, too. It's called the Zoom P4.. It's the thing that the podcast company gave us.

And Jorma, of course, already figured it out.

Me and Akiva did.

Oh, man. We all have access to that?

Yeah, it's annoying as fuck.

Yeah, it's a nightmare. Now, before we got on here, when we were tech-checking, you were mentioning that this felt a lot like Spider-Man the musical, and when they were in kind of previews and figuring stuff out, Seth, and then you were gonna tell me something about when you saw Spider-Man the musical before it started. Oh, right.

People, this might already be lost to history, but in the early runs of Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark, is that what it was called? A lot of Spider-Men were falling from the rafters and hurting themselves. super bad. And living in New York City at the time, that was pretty much all the New York Post was writing about, is how many Spider-Men were falling and hurting themselves. I wrote way too many sketches about it.

That seems possible in New York.

Dealt with personal injuries that happened in Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark.

Yes.

Inviting me to, this is not a joke, inviting me to the premiere of Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark. that said something along the lines of-.

He wanted you to turn off the jokes.

Well, that's what he said. He's like, something along the lines of like, you've had your fun, you've told your jokes, now come see the real thing.

Thinking like, once you see it, you'll understand there's nothing to joke about.

Right, because people are genuinely hurting themselves.

And then, did you go see it?

I did, I went to opening night. And my memory of opening night of Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark, which I should say went smoothly, and none of the Spider-Men, none of the Green Goblins, none of the audience, everybody walked out as they entered.

You're saying you went to a Broadway show and there were zero deaths?

There was zero. I mean, I will say, half of the audience, and I'm not going to say which half I was in, I think was a little bummed out that nobody fell from the rafters. But, you guys remember Hal Willner, rest in peace. Absolutely. Incredible SNL.

I don't know what Hal's title was.

Some version of music.

Music guru.

Yeah. Music supervisor?

He was the guy, if you needed a sketch scored, Hal had this sort of encyclopedic knowledge of music. He was also an incredible record producer. He had the coolest friends in the world. He was this kind of New York icon who was friends with people from Lou Reed to Jarvis Cocker, to everybody. He was at the opening, and I remember his son was sitting directly behind me.

Why can't he see that this is going to go bad?

He's literally singing a song about power and how much he wants it. Has he not read the Greek myths? After that-?

Yeah, what happened?

Did you make fun of the show again afterwards, publicly?

Was Bono there? Because it'd be great if he didn't show up. I think Bono was.

Bono must have been at opening night.

Wasn't one of the give up the smooches about that? Or am I thinking of something else?

I do feel like we have to take three giant steps back for our listeners.

You don't think that's household name stuff?

The very fact that you're referring to the give up the smooches as a recurring thing that an audience-.

I don't know what that is.

I don't either.

Even you guys, two out of three of the Lonely Island, don't know what give up the smooches are.

Well, yeah, they didn't care for my live stuff. They were just focused on the shorts.

Yeah, that's true.

This is very true. They only had respect for pre-taped bits. We were busy. Give up the smooch. was Andy in a full rigging where he had to hang upside down and come down from the rafters.

Yeah, update feature, yeah.

Basically, your head was next to mine and you kept trying to get me to kiss you.

Do the upside down smooch.

How do we not remember this?

You were probably editing.

But you were dressed like Spider-Man without the mask.

He had the mask, right? And then you pulled it up.

Pulled it down to do the smooch.

Like Tobey Maguire style. Classic. I didn't know how to title, I guess.

It was Seth, give up the smooch.

Give up the smooch. was your catchphrase in this sketch that required so much rehearsal.

I think I wrote it with Rob Klein. In fact, I know I did.

Yeah, you definitely wrote it with Rob Klein. And now it was deeply uncomfortable to hang upside down, correct?

Well, yes. The funny thing was I kept writing things for myself where I hung upside down. Because we did upside down Spider-Man for the Emma Stone monologue as well. And we also did an update feature about the guy who got hung up on the ski lift.

Oh, where his pants fell down?

Who fell out of the ski lift, but didn't fall down off it. His leg was wrapped around it. So basically, me and Klein kept writing stuff for me to be upside down. But every time we did it, they would always send me up like 10 minutes before the thing. So I'd be upside down listening to you guys doing, listening to you mostly, doing update jokes.

You remember, too, how Ken Amon would always tell you that whenever anybody had to be rigged on the show upside down, it was like the Flying Walendas. It was like a famous family that did the rigging for every Broadway show.

Leave it to Ken to reference that.

It was like, this is showbiz history, Padley. Also, by the way, you think it's bad for you. It was not my favorite to tell update jokes knowing that you were hanging above me.

especially with all the Spider-Man musical stuff happening, I was like, if they are falling.

Well, also, you're really got to knock on wood if you're going to joke on the fact that they're falling, and in order to joke on it, you got to rig yourself up.

Karmically speaking, I was O to fall.

It's amazing how sexy that can be in Spider-Man and how probably unsexy it was to shoot, I would think, for Toby.

The movie, they just like rig up Toby for one second and they're like, go, go, go, go, go.

We should call him.

I do think that a list I want to keep running for this podcast in our early nascent stages is guests we want to have on to answer really short questions.

That's great.

So, Toby, just to explain real quick how long he had to be upside down.

Okay, well, yeah. Ask him the one question. He goes like, five minutes.

Okay, thanks for coming on, Toby. And then ideally get him to do a live ad for us.

Long intro music, long outro music.

Can we start a list?

Yeah, so we're going to have long guests, but I also want to have short guests, which are tops two questions.

I have two ideas for long guests.

Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Nia Long, Justin Long.

Oh, I thought you were going to say Snoop Dogg. Oh, that's so great. That sucks.

Howie Long. Great.

Seth, I got to say, like for your intro, for this, I get sort of jealous thinking about the time you didn't spend with us.

Oh, you shouldn't be. I genuinely mean it. I mean, for me, the first four years before you guys showed up, not because you weren't there yet, but that was my most fraught time at the show, because I didn't feel like I knew what I was doing yet. So it was a fun time to be in New York City, but you guys showed up right about the time where I finally felt like I had some footing on the show. So I was a lot more fun to be around.

Wait, wait, what year did you feel like that kicked over? Because I remember my second year going up an elevator with Emily Spivey, who I consider like a vet. Like. she was a veteran writer who was getting like two to three pieces on every week. And I was having like a panic attack in the elevator going up 17..

I think my second year you guys were there, I started doing Update and felt a little better.

That'll do it.

Whereas the first year you guys were there, I think it was the flop sweatiest year I had, because not just Andy, but also Bill Sudeikis, first years for those guys.

Three male whites.

Three male whites. And I was barely holding on. as a male white. I already felt like I was in third position behind Fred and Forte. And then, all of a sudden, I'm not even sniffing the podium.

As far as.

I was like outside chance as a bronze medalist for best male white, but it was rough. And also I really liked writing for all you guys more than I liked writing for me. And I had this realization of, oh, if I don't like writing for me.

It's so funny. The perception for everyone is completely different, though. Cause no one ever thinks they're on solid ground, except for like two people. And for us, I was like, oh, Seth gets something in Top of Show every week.

Yeah.

Yeah. I always thought a few is just like, oh, he's killing it.

But Top of Show was a little different, because sometimes, I don't know. I felt like a lot of cold opens that were serviceable. You know what I mean? They weren't things that.

You know what Akiva always liked to say?

What's that?

Top of Show is Top of Co.

Oh, Top of Co.

It's always Top of Co.

Yeah. Oh, that brings back the memories.

And I'd be like, oh, that's not quite a nested rhyme.

Yeah. That was your criticism of it.

You'd be like, yeah, but it works.

The more I say it, the more people agree. That's right.

I will say this. I don't remember what year it was. I went into Lauren's office and said something about what I thought was wrong with Update when I was hosting it. And Lauren said, oh, Update's the least of my problems. And he didn't say it's not a problem, but there was something about him saying it was the least of his problems, where I thought, oh, look at me.

Oh, teacher's pet.

Looks like I might be not, but that speaks to the fact that you're never on firm footing. You're just like not the biggest problem in his world. Right. Look at me.

You just sucked less than everything else sucked at that moment. Yeah.

No, it's always just like, well, I won't get fired this week.

How was your day, honey? Let's just say I'm the least of Lauren's problems.

And he's got a lot of them. His house in Amagansett has squirrels.

No, there's nothing quite like bombing in front of Lauren.

And just, yeah.

Yeah, if cast heard what was said about them, they would quit the business.

So Alex Bayes, who took over Update after Doug Ables, and now is the head writer for Late Night, he did the thing you're not supposed to do, but it was so funny he had to do it, which is he basically shared a awful thing. Lauren said about me during a weekend update, which is really funny because I realized now we do a thing on our show called A Closer Look, which is sort of our signature piece. Amy had left and I was trying to figure out a new kind of really thing to do. And I had a magnifying glass and it was called A Closer Look. And I spoke with a Sherlock Holmes-y accent and basically took a closer look at something.

You gotta take some swings, though.

You gotta take some swings. So, as the maybe proxy host of the show, I do wanna keep things moving. The goal to our listeners, I do wanna say the goal of this is to go through the digital shorts over the years. But before we get to that, let's talk real quick. And guys, I've heard it before.

Well, Keeve's been pretty quiet. I think it's his turn.

Yeah, Keeve, jump on.

Yeah, Keeve, you take over. Oh, geez.

How fast can I get through it? But pretty fast, right? It's just, we all grew up in Berkeley, California. We went to the public schools. Me and Jorm met in seventh grade at Willard Junior High.

Jorm is over a year older than me.

Okay.

I'm the most mature.

So we met him when we were in eighth and he's in seventh, but me and Jorm became friends in seventh, and then all of us became friends in 11th grade, really?

My 10th, your 11th. Again, I'm younger.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, calendar year, you're not a year younger than me, but once again, I don't know how that happened. Probably held back, I'm gonna guess.

Right, and we get a lot of the same references that Jorm is a little aged out of.

That's right. I was a big snorks guy growing up.

Exactly, whereas Jorm was more into snorks.

Yeah, yeah.

The thing about the snorks era? is it had a hard out.

Yeah, a hard out.

Basically between grades.

There was no bleed.

No bleed on the snorks.

No, they canceled it, and that was it.

The snorks, can I jump in? I'm gonna interrupt your narrative real quick. I think the snorks were the first thing as a kid that I realized was a knockoff.

Yes, yes. I think for all of us, we were like, well, this is a rip off. I like it, but this sucks.

Yeah, I'm gonna watch it, but I don't respect it.

Like eight years old.

Yeah, it's pretty shitty.

I can't believe you're doing the Smurfs like this, but I do like my snorks.

But Astro's a charming guy.

Do you have a favorite thing? that's clearly a knockoff?

Oh, that's a great question.

Yeah, GoBots, right?

Oh yeah, were GoBots were second?

I think I just researched and found out that they were first, but in my mind they were second and were the rip off.

Oh, so then for me, Transformers.

Yeah, I guess Transformers.

The famous rip off of GoBots.

What a knockoff.

Wait, there's no way. GoBots was first?

All right, so this is, again, we're in the lab, so to speak. That's our question for the next episode. Everybody has to come up with their favorite knockoff.

Oh, I like that. Is that engaging social? Yeah. Oh, that's smart.

We will get the answer really quickly.

When you guys tell me, I want you to preface it with hashtag knockoff.

Oh, that's really good.

All right, so you guys met in high school during the Snorks era. When did you guys realize you were collaborators? When did you move to LA? All at once, together?

All at once in 2000.

You're NYU, Andy.

I graduated from NYU, yeah.

You're Santa Cruz, Keeve?

Me and Keeve hung at Santa Cruz, though, because I went to Santa Cruz my first two years. This is interesting. And then we all had made video and film projects. Yoram was doing acting, and he acted in Keeve's stuff, and we met back up in the summer after we all graduated and showed each other the stuff we had made, and we were like, oh, I see, we're all dumbasses. Let's work together, since we're already friends and we want to do the same thing.

We could put that in the show notes.

Yeah. The evening we decided.

I always hear a podcast, always talk about show notes.

There was an evening where we met.

Will we put that in the show? I'm trying to tell the fucking story, piece of shit. I want to ask Seth if we have show notes. Stop asking about the fucking show notes.

We can do. show notes, Keeve. This is the first time this story has ever been told. All right, keep going, Andy.

I got to say, if anyone actually turned this on, they already know this story, probably, right? Yeah. I mean, I guess not. They might be just Seth heads.

That's true. Do you think the Seth heads at this point are a little worried about the lack of politics? Possibly.

What I do know they want is our three opinion on politics of the day.

Yeah, when you go full politics and mix it with zero politics, I guess you end up with like a little bit.

Yeah. This is, I think, a good level, which is zero. So you moved to LA.

I'll take it from here. So we took this photo at my mom's house.

Which will be in the show notes.

Exactly. And it was the three of us making a decision to go down to Los Angeles all together. We all moved into my super shitty tiny apartment on the West side of Los Angeles. Then I went on vacation and these guys looked for houses. for two weeks.

But we went with it, so credit to us.

Yeah, more credit to us for approving Akiva's idea.

It's not a good name.

And hopefully we'll find a name for this podcast in the same organic way. Burn the tapes.

Burn the tapes.

You'll also find that this repeats too, of me and Andy approving Keev's great ideas. Yeah.

And then taking credit for being the approvers. Yeah.

Not overtly, but just sometimes by being the face of the operation, getting credit.

Yeah, that's true. So now you're making videos.

Yeah, we're all temping. Really, really shitty temp jobs in Los Angeles.

Who was the worst temp of the three of you?

Ooh, that's really hard. I think both me and Andy were probably tied. I got fired three times.

I got fired a lot. What did you get fired for?

I got fired from a BMW dealership on the west side of Los Angeles for printing my resume for another job.

That's more fun.

Yeah, yeah.

I was just late as shit every day, no matter where I was.

Yeah, I got fired for being late once. And then our best firing story was that we would constantly take shittier temp jobs for shittier pay if we could all work together. So we got a job working for Fox, making Christmas ornaments. It was just in a warehouse where we were tying ribbons onto silver stars for Fox employees. And I think we were getting paid like $7 an hour.

We were being separated.

And then we were like, no, no, no. The only reason we took this job is because we wanted to talk to each other. And she was like, well, that's not gonna work for us, because you guys aren't working well enough. We were like, we think we're working better actually. And then she was like, well, you guys can leave if you don't want to separate.

Well, you're missing one key detail.

Which is what?

She said, if you don't like it, you can leave. And we went, hmm, what time is it? And we checked our watch and we were like, they're still serving McDonald's breakfast. So we quit.

We took our hour long $7.

And we went and got McDonald's breakfast. That was the deciding factor. Yeah.

When you made the decision based on that, she probably didn't think, I can't believe. I let him get away.

You guys are nuts for sports.

The personal touches were really nice. There were old Steelers, newspaper articles framed, Pirates articles framed, but also a big old picture of Mr. Rogers and another big old picture of Wiz Khalifa.

That is everything, Pittsburgh. That is a black and yellow Airbnb.

And it made our visit very personal. And this is just a shout out to anybody who might be listening, thinking, hey, my home has personal touches. People who visited my town might wanna stay there. You might as well just go over to Airbnb and see what your hosting opportunities are. And you can enjoy it as much as I enjoyed it.

Are you talking about right now? Because that's where I'm at, Seth.

Well, I was talking about the past. Oh, okay. The past is often present with you, Yoram. It is.

That's what I'm always saying.

I think a lot of people we knew back in the day and a lot of those same people now have used therapy as a helpful tool for those days when you're feeling drained, when you feel like you have no energy for the things that are important to you. And BetterHelp is a great option for anyone who's looking for somebody to talk to. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapist at any time for no additional charge.

Seth, if they wanted to talk to you personally and just get it all out, could they?

No, I am not available nor licensed. Okay, great. But fortunately, BetterHelp is. Find your social sweet spot with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash island, today to get 10% off your first month.

Yeah, airing is not really the right word for it, but it was almost like a mini film festival each month, where 200 people would get together to show each other their videos, Channel 101, which was created by Dan Harmon and Rob Schraub.

Shout out Schraub and Harmon.

What's the path from you guys doing that to you guys writing for the movie awards?

We purposefully didn't take jobs, specifically because a friend of ours had sort of gotten into the circuit of writing for like sitcoms and then never got to do their own stuff. So we'd sort of seen like, oh, if you get into that world, sometimes like that's the end and you just start writing for other people. And so we always kind of wanted to do our own thing.

I was just talking about this the other day, and I think it was also on the naive idea that they would take away our specialness and we would go be a cog in a machine. and we were 22 and self-righteous and didn't realize you can go work on a sitcom for six years and then go be Charlie Kaufman, like the most original writer of all time. In our minds, the moment we became corporate drones, we would disappear into the system.

Well, we're from Berkeley, so you know.

I don't remember ever even talking about it.

We just would, when we were so broke.

Did we get offered to write on shows, though?

No. Oh, never. That's what I'm saying, like we didn't get offered.

And no one even knew who we were.

I think that's very nice of you to establish, Andy, for our industry listeners. Yeah. No. That no offer was made.

None offers.

Got it. We were literally like boogie nights, like coked up in the attic, like.

And if they offer a job for us, we say no, because we got morals. Does it count as principle that this never got road tested? Yeah.

But we couldn't afford Coke. Well, yeah.

Our friend got us a job on the Movie Awards, put us in touch with Joel Gallen and split a single writer check.

This should be noted. For people not in showbiz, this is another reason why it was good that you guys didn't take a sitcom job. This weird thing where two people are allowed to be one writer.

They allowed us to be one writer. And I think that we got $100 a day. And then, after taxes, that covered like a burrito.

It was $1,000 a week. So we were getting $333 each. And we already had gotten managers and agents that we were really proud that we had gotten agents and managers. So we were also paying them 20% of $333 a week each. I will point out that the MTV Movie Awards were a cool job.

And John Benjamin, they were both there.

That's right, that's right, yeah.

It was a great show. I remember it being a show as a comedy person. you didn't want to miss.

For sure. I mean, there were very memorable things, like the Stiller stunt double with Tom Cruise. thing was like a sketch that was not on a sketch show that everyone knows.

Yes. And MTV had super deep pockets then. So the sketches looked great. Yeah.

They looked amazing, yeah. It was a lot of cutting people into the movies and stuff.

And it was just cool for us to be able to write for like actually cool, famous people on these little pops. And I feel like first year we barely got anything on.

It's also pre-social media. So it was still rare to get to see movies get made fun of in any way.

Right.

And a bunch of famous people in one place like not in a movie or a show.

Yeah, that was still rare.

And you guys did it twice though?

Yeah, we did the Lindsay Lohan.

Lindsay Lohan was first year.

But then the second year is the big year because Fallon hosts.

Correct. Fallon hosts brings Shoemaker, Higgins and a ton of SNL writers with them.

Right.

Including you.

No. No, but you were just there. The after parties, I think maybe the first time we met, but I did not write on it.

I would have remembered if Seth was writing. Yeah.

Right, but I feel like you were in town. I feel like we hung out in hotel rooms with a bunch of SNL writers while we were doing it. And I feel like you were there.

A hundred percent. Yeah. And I remember Shoemaker, who, again, just to give people backstory, Shoemaker was a producer at SNL and we were all there. He's a name that's gonna come up a ton. He's now the producer of this show.

Tell us why.

Because he just sees what you're good at and tells you what to do with your own skills, as opposed to telling you that thing that other people do, where they tell you sort of what's hot right now. Yeah. His thing is what you do is great. Here's how you should take what you do and make it the thing that's hot right now.

He is a wonderful person. He's also someone who can tell when people are spinning out, and he's good at telling them you're worrying about the wrong thing, you're fine. Yeah. Which, especially at SNL, you just need someone to tell you that.

He also worked his way up from, like PA, right? At SNL?

Yeah, so he started in 1985, he was a script PA at SNL where writers would write sketches in 1985 on yellow legal pads. And then he just slowly worked his way up and I think understood the bones of that place better than anybody.

When we first got hired, our first meeting was in Shoemaker's office, like with all the new writers that got hired, right? Keeve, you were there. Andy wasn't there for this, but we were waiting for Tucker, Brian Tucker. And I just remember meeting Shoemaker and being like, I can't believe this is our boss. Like one of our bosses.

Yeah, I feel like Shoemaker and I always laugh that I would not have the career I have without Shoemaker. And what works great is he tells everybody what to do. And if you listen, he loves you. If you listen, it goes great. I mean, he understood very early on what the best use of my skills were.

As we go through these shorts, he will come up a lot, especially right at the beginning, because he was the main person encouraging us to keep doing them.

One last interesting thing about Shoemaker, I recently had dinner with him. It was supposed to be with him and Seth, but Seth had another baby, so he bailed.

It's true. Classic.

And Shoemaker, after a few drinks, confessed to me finally that, even though he thought I was funny and Seth was funny, that his favorite comedian is Colin Quinn and everyone else sucks in comparison.

This is very true.

He's like, I get, why you guys are good.

Shoemaker's always put Quinn first.

Wait, that's real?

He's like, I get why you guys are good, but he's for me.

Quinn is my guy. I was like, look, I get it. I love Quinn.

When Quinn is on our show, it's the most heartbreaking thing, because Shoemaker has a super recognizable laugh and he sits the same place every show I do. And when Quinn is on, Quinn gets like 10, Shoemaker laughs and in my head, I'm thinking, I think that's what I got in all of May.

He loves Quinn.

I mean, Colin Quinn, is super funny. We all love him, but I will say everybody that was at the show at the same time as him, like they know the truth that he's actually the funniest of all of them.

Not only is he the funniest, but he's so up Shoemaker's alley as a pure New York comedian, because Shoemaker is pure New York. So, jumping ahead, you guys meet Shoemaker. He likes you guys. Andy, I remember some of what you did in your audition that got you hired. Do you remember your audition?

I do. I want to know what you remember.

Well, I remember watching your audition. It filled a huge hole because obviously at SNL, you're always looking for people who can play those who are in the news. And at the time we didn't have a Swedish chef.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know if you remember, but like there was some weeks where it was conspicuous in its absence. Yeah.

There's going to be so many people who've auditioned for this show, who listen to this, they're like, what the fuck?

Oh yeah.

Who did the Swedish chef?

If you auditioned for this show and didn't get it and you like overthought it and you were like, what do they need? What are they looking for? They don't want that. I know they don't want that. You really came in and basically said, fuck off.

Here's the thing. I'm a politico as established.

Yes. Yeah, we all think that.

I didn't and still kind of don't follow the news.

That's probably better.

I mean, I watch a closer look from time to time.

Thank you, buddy. Yeah.

The old one that was in dress. rehearsal that got cut.

Yeah, the Sherlock Holmes one.

That's the one? Wait, that's... So. when somebody says to you, I love Seth Meyers' closer looks, you're thinking of the magnifying glass?

I'm like, oh, you have access to that? Yeah. Must be some dark web shit.

What was your Swedish chef impression? How long did you do the Swedish chef? I mean, we did them all at the time for each other, like, or me and Andy.

You guys helped me write my audition, which was very nice.

Yeah.

You know who else helped me with my audition was Will Forte, for no reason other than just to be nice. Like fully helped me workshop it.

That's classic Forte.

Should be noted, another name that will come up a great deal in this podcast, genuinely one of the nicest, most selfless human beings. Often to the detriment of the people who are currently with him, yes.

If you go into a party, the deeper you go in with Will Forte, you're not leaving with fucking Will Forte because he's going to say goodbye to every motherfucker on the way out.

Yeah. Yeah. But audition.

Yeah, what did you do?

Schmorgity borg. You schmorgity borg'd?

I schmorgity borg'd. Oh, I think it was like a commercial for like pop songs, but it was the Swedish chef singing them. So it was basically just like the Swedish chef doing In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins.

Better than I remember. Yeah. So wait, Andy, is all you remember, Swedish chef? Cause, that's all I remember.

No, I remember probably all of it, if I really.

Just do it for us. You have to be under five minutes.

It's a mix of standup. I had been doing standup.

Oh, right. So you did some standup, you did chef.

I did Ross Trent in one of them.

Really?

Which ended up being a digital short.

Years in.

Yes. I feel like I weirdly did actually do a lot of what I did in my audition on the show, but it always ended up being like one line in a sketch. Like I think I did an impression of Billy Bob Thornton. Right.

Did you do, Jimmy Fallon?

I did. Jimmy Fallon and I ended up doing that with Jimmy. We like redid his Mick Jagger mirror thing with me and him when he hosted.

Do you remember an update you did on air where you played Jimmy Fallon at Hanukkah? that got cut?

It didn't air. I did an update feature called Jewie Fallon. And it was just me as Jimmy talking about Jewish stuff.

I feel like, what do we think? On the count of three, I want everybody to answer. In 2024, can you do a character called Jewie Fallon? One, two, three.

Of course you can.

You think definitely yes?

Oh, for sure. If you're Jewish.

Yeah, that's true, you could.

Yeah. So you get hired and then you guys get hired as writers. Akiva and Yoram.

Yeah. Andy went, did an audition, came back. Then they said, all right, that went well enough. Why don't all three of you come in and audition? So Andy had to do a second audition and we had really scraped the barrel to try to put together that first one.

And we weren't coming from like a improv theater background. We had been making all these little short films together and borrowing video cameras from friends and equipment and things like that. And just making stuff together, because that's what we knew. But we weren't coming from like being on stage every day, like making up new characters. So it was scraping the barrel to be like, here's an impression of this guy.

It is weird, because this is part of the first half of your first season, which is how far you guys went from your strengths. Like you did this arc away from it and then back to it. It's so weird that the show didn't know from the beginning, oh, these guys make short films.

That was not a job opening. That was not a slot that needed to be filled.

It wasn't. And nor did anyone know that we did that.

I think, as Shoemaker, I had seen episodes of The Boo. So that was your OC parody to timestamp it. So I knew you guys made short videos, but even then, working at the show, it did not occur to me that that would be your path forward.

And we realized that sort of quickly, because I remember, one of the first things we wrote for the show was a sketch that was a musical, correct me if I'm wrong, guys, but it was Andy, as a young man who wants to wear his shorts at night, and his overly strict father, who I believe was Forte, won't let him wear his shorts at night. And it was a musical. And then, at one point he flew out of a window on shorts like Aladdin, of, like his dream of wearing shorts at night.

Just the drastic overreach in our very first episode.

And it was a real realization at the table of being like, this doesn't work for this show.

To be fair, that would not have worked as a pre-tape either.

No, it sucked.

It wouldn't have. But it was just like explaining your humor is a difficult thing occasionally. And the videos for us were sort of a shortcut to doing that, because you can just sort of present the idea after the fact.

That's true.

I do want to start talking about this effort you guys made for Live Sketches. And I've done some research, but real quick, did you all find out at the same time that you were hired?

I found out first. I believe the story is I found out on a Friday and we spent the whole weekend sweating it out and being like, Andy, you have to take it. Like they were, being so nice. They're like, you have to take it. It's your dream.

Yeah, me and Yoram had to make a pact, essentially so that there wouldn't be one of us left in LA by ourselves.

And now all jokes aside, because earlier we talked about how you guys turned down all these sitcom jobs. you were never offered. But I think I can venture that you guys would have kept that pact.

Yeah, absolutely.

Do you really think now, today, if only one of you had gotten hired, you guys would have said no?

I think we would have. I think it would have been a crazy hard decision, but I think we would have.

Yeah.

I don't know how they ever could have decided between us, since we turned in a writing packet together.

No, but I did audition and I didn't get the show. So that might've been more of a strike against one of us.

I requested a writer's meeting, by the way, when they offered us all the audition after Andy did good. And I was like, I'll go for a writer's meeting. And so I had a meeting with Tina and Lauren.

Oftentimes, though, you are in people audition and it helps their cause getting hired as a writer, because you get to show off your writing.

I got one laugh that I can remember in my audition. It was just me dancing as a 13 year old at a bar mitzvah. And it was no words, and it was just like really awkward. It was kind of like a Just You Guys character, just very awkward dancing and like small. And I got one audible laugh from Tina and I was like, fuck yeah, if that was just that, that was fucking worth it.

Yeah, it's like, why don't they make the whole plane out of the black box? Right?

That's probably what she was thinking.

Oh, we'll just do this. So guys, Andy's first appearance on the show is Bill and Andy Impression Off on October 1st, 2005.. Bill Hader and Andy Samberg.

Hi, everybody. Hi.

Lay it out for us guys.

Well, we had tried to write some big barn burner sketch that Yoram has already talked about. And when nothing we did got picked, we got told like, oh, you always get a second chance to figure out something on the show because you can always slide an update in. So we knew that was the only chance something else could get on the show. And so it must've been Thursday night, and me and Andy had an apartment together. So it was like three or four in the morning on Thursday night.

I think that was the gist. I mean, it was born of me knowing that Bill, who we were already buddies with, was really good at impressions and I was famously bad at them. And just kind of leading into that.

It's very fun to rewatch, because the game is that Bill does great impressions and you do terrible ones.

Yes.

But the other fun thing is that, and I don't know if this was the backbone of the idea, Bill's impressions were not for the audience.

No, they're so old.

He had a really good Peter Falk and a really good James Mason, but they don't actually kill. Like they're insanely good, but it's not like crushing.

That probably helped your cause, Andy.

But that's a good intro to Bill, though, and Bill's heart.

Okay, Peter Falk.

Listen, gee, this guy, this guy's wacko, I tell you, he's really wacko.

Pretty good, but how about a little Jack Nicholson? All right, here we go. Hey, how's it going? I'm Jack Nicholson. What's up?

is acclaimed. English actor, James Mason. I've told you before, Lolita, no boys.

Thank you.

How about a little dash of Julia Roberts?

Good question for you, Andy, because a sketch I wrote, and again, timestamping, when you guys started, we did a fundraiser for a Katrina sketch, and it was celebrities, and Bill did Pacino.

And destroyed.

Yeah, it was one of those show-stopping moments. We are building a new house in the new New Orleans. We'll put the doors wherever we want.

I go to save that dog.

It's fascinating now to know, and Bill's talked openly about his anxiety on the show, and again, to echo what we've said, nobody has an easy ride, nobody ever thinks. But at that moment, standing next to him, because I was doing my less well-received Anderson Cooper, but I knew, having been on the show for at that point, you know, it was the beginning of my fifth season, if I could have said anything to him after that, it would have been, oh, you're gonna be fine.

Yeah, it was like a rock concert.

He was the next thing, for sure.

Who were you in that sketch, Andy?

I was holding a boom mic. Oh. I was like a guy in the news crew.

But you fucking nailed it, though.

Everybody thought you nailed it, yeah. But Bill and Andy impression on was a success. It should be noted. Yeah, it went well. You do what Bill Murray did.

Sure, I mean, it definitely set up who we were. Yeah. Like Bill, doing amazing impressions of super old cinephile actors, and me being like a massive doofus.

Yeah. Then, an episode later, congratulations, you get your first sketch on the werewolf.

To be just starting on the show and get something on the first two episodes, we were feeling pretty good.

You should. Wait a minute, are you a werewolf, too? Oh, what, this?

No, no, it's just a mustache. I like the way it looked on Tom so much, I decided to grow one myself.

It was a guy who brings home a first date, and he starts warning her in a way that lets you know he's a werewolf, and at midnight or whatever, he's going to have a transformation and be horrific. And then the time strikes, and all of a sudden it's just, now. he's hideous, but the only thing that changes is now he has a nice mustache. Yeah. And he's like, don't look at me, I'm hideous, essentially.

A recurring theme of mustaches in our work.

Yeah, mustaches play a big role in your first year on the show. But now there's one, it's really gonna sound like busting, but it's the greatest gift you guys ever gave. Because one, you guys wrote a pre-taped bit. that went badly. I think.

Oh, I know what it is.

But also, this song has never left my head. It's a fucking earworm. JJ Casuals.

Keep it casual, whatever. Keep it natural with shoes that look like feet. Things get hectic, but don't sweat it. Keep it JJ Casual.

Do you like to keep it mellow?

Can you dig it? Shoes that look like feet.

Can I explain this one? Yes. Please. JJ Casuals was Andy doing an impression of Jack Johnson. It was a commercial parody.

Out of respect for the writers.

Out of respect. But I will tell you that, in my life, not a month goes by where I don't think,

It's the words to live by.

Yeah. Things get hectic, but don't sweat it. Keep it, JJ Casual.

The writing was on the wall. There was some tunes coming.

Tunes were coming. Yeah. As a sketch, didn't quite land.

Well, we were not allowed in the editing room.

We got positive feedback, I will say. Yes. When you're that new on the show, just getting something on feels like such a big win. Even something not doing well to you is so far beyond what you expect, which is to not get anything on. I will say, every one of these, we were counting as a win, even when we knew they weren't doing good.

I remember, to be honest, when you wrote JJ Casual, I thought it was super funny, because we would pick the commercial parodies before the season started. And so I loved it. And I do feel like the problem was maybe the sensibility of who ended up shooting it and editing it was different.

Yeah. And I don't want to call anybody out or anything, but there was a moment that we had, while shooting it, where Keev leaned over to me while it was being shot, because you didn't have that much power in this particular scenario.

None, yes.

None power, but they allowed writers on set. And Keev leaned over and was like, they just crossed the line. And I was like, oh my God, yeah.

It's day one of filming.

Day one, yeah. It's the eyeline.

And we were like, wait a minute.

It was a moment where there was two people at the maitre d', you know, at the front desk of a restaurant, and they flipped sides. And I was like, I like whispered it to Yoram and like drew a diagram and was like, maybe we don't understand. Maybe they're doing something else.

We were like, oh, maybe we're wrong.

And then we just watched them waste the time of like. do the whole scene, realize it slowly by talking to some script supervisor, come back, set the camera on the other shoulder, and do the scene again.

And it was one of the things that we were like, oh, we should do the thing that we've been doing for the last five years.

I guess we do know enough.

And I do remember, I'm saying this as a criticism myself and also a compliment to you guys. I remember you came back, Keev, after shooting that, and said basically a different version of what you just explained about crossing the line. And you were a little bit more heated than you are now with time. And I remember the way I responded to you, because again, I'd been there for a few years and I think I had sort of relaxed into what the establishment of the show was. I felt like that scene where in Chinatown, where the cop takes Nicholson and goes, it's Chinatown, Jake.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's what they say. And I think it's just to like tip people to how this podcast obviously turns out, you guys were unsatisfied with that as an outcome.