At the Artsbeat blog at the New York Times, an interview with Horatio Sanz (iO, Second City, Upright Citizens Brigade, Saturday Night Live) and Chris Parnell about working together on their new Comedy Central show:
Q. When you leave a show like “Saturday Night Live,” do you go through a period of readjusting to the outside world?
A. PARNELL For me, I did it twice. I got fired and re-hired. The second time I left, it was O.K. I was kind of ready to be done, but it was a little hard to watch the show. I wanted to see what was going on and keep up with it, but I felt like, ah, I’m not a part of that world anymore. That took a little bit of adjusting. Now I can watch the show very easily and enjoy it without any pangs of wanting to be there. SANZ You learn how to work on television at that show. There’s no other place like it. So when you’re back in Hollywood, you have to really adjust to the way the other half does it. This may sound cocky, but we get it down to such a science because of the limited time. There are a lot of shortcuts we make internally that they’re not making, and you kind of have to back off and not do too much. “Oh, we could make every script better.” [laughs] But we have to lay off, and not step on any toes.
A few improvisers appeared at the 82nd Annual Academy Awards last night:
Tina Fey (iO, Second City, Saturday Night Live, Mean Girls, 30 Rock) on the red carpet:
Tina Fey presents the award for Best Original Screenplay with Robert Downey Jr:
Steve Carell (Second City, The Daily Show, The Office, Little Miss Sunshine) and Nancy Carell (Nancy Walls) (Second City, Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show) on the red carpet:
Steve Carell presents the award for Best Animated Feature with Cameron Diaz:
Watch Rachel Dratch (Jazz Freddy, iO, Second City, Saturday Night Live) and Tina Fey (iO, Second City, Saturday Night Live, Mean Girls, 30 Rock) in “Wicked” from the 1997 Second City Mainstage revue Paradigm Lost:
Watch Steve Carell (Second City, The Daily Show, The Office) in a short video sketch “Dates of Future Past”from the 1991 TV showcase of Second City talent Life As We Know It!:
At the New York Times, Seth Meyers (iO, Saturday Night Live) describes his Sunday routine:
OUT LATE, UP LATE During show season, I’m probably out until 5 in the morning with the rest of the cast; you know, there’s all that adrenaline to burn off after putting on a live show. No way can you just go home. So I don’t sound like an alcoholic, I probably don’t have my first drink until 2 a.m. I usually get home around 5, fall asleep, and get up around 11. I let the day wake me up. My bedroom is curtainless on purpose because I don’t like sleeping in.
DELI RUN I have this very nice Italian machine that makes coffee, but after using it a couple times I realized I like deli coffee better, so the first thing I do is go get a coffee. Being from New England, I enjoy wearing my Red Sox hat around town.
