Julio Torres’ greatest rejected SNL sketch involved Gal Gadot and a drunken blueberry creature

For anyone who wishes Saturday Night Live would take some comic chances with premise, tone, and general ten-to-one weirdness rather than slapping that Trump wig on Alec Baldwin and calling it a night, Julio Torres is your guy. Taking time off from prepping the second season of his genuinely odd and delightful HBO series Los Espookys (which features SNL pal and Meyers occasional bandleader Fred Armisen), Torres talked some late-night shop with former Saturday Night Live head writer Seth Meyers on Thursday’s Late Night, including a story about an unintentionally horrifying (to a poor intern) but hilarious wee hours smoothie run. As anyone who’s seen Torres’ recent standup special My Favorite Shapes By Julio Torres can guess, the legendarily long and grueling all-night writing hours at SNL only send Torres’ comedy-brain spinning even further out into the reaches of inspired, loopy conceptual strangeness.

Which brings us to Bluebee. (Blooby? Bleuby?) A sketch inspired by an actual pencil sketch Torres showed to fellow SNL writer Anna Drezen while in the midst of a particular unfruitful brainstorming session. “I was about to say it came close, but it didn’t even get read,” admitted Torres with no small measure of pride, as he explained how the drawing of a Violet Beauregard-esque doodle of a bulbous, high-heeled woman-thing (which he brought to show Meyers) sent Torres and Drezen’s minds inevitably to the concept of a blueberry-borne creature that invades the wombs of pregnant women and complains drunkenly about not being “on the list.” Meyers, no stranger to what strange shapes comic inspiration can form during an all-nighter at SNL, speculated that Bluebee seems like something Torres came up with late at night. “About four p.m.,” responded Torres, leaving us to wonder just what ideas do come to him in the small hours. As it turns out, guest host and intended Bluebee star Gal Gadot wasn’t really as into Bluebee as one might have hoped. (Like, they couldn’t have ditched that Kardashian sketch to make room for some Bluebee?) Well, there’s always Meyers’ “Second Chance Theater,” or maybe Bluebee can make the cut for Los Espookys’ next roster of fantastical monster-figments.