Maya Rudolph doesn't think she could create the same things on Saturday Night Live if she worked there today
"People want to take a sound bite and create problems, and that's become a business," the actor said of the scrutiny that comes with being a comedian in 2024
Maya Rudolph is one of the most prolific and beloved players to ever grace the Saturday Night Live stage. Without her, we wouldn’t have Beyoncé on Hot Ones (a sketch that still needs to become a reality), a version of Kamala Harris that we can laugh at with slightly less trepidation for the future of our country, or—perhaps worst of all—Pamela Bell and her perfect, horrible National Anthem. Still, because of how often things are taken out of context that exists in the world of comedy on the internet, we might not have seen any of these iconic characters, had the timing been different.
“I don’t think I would be creating the things I created on Saturday Night Live if I worked there today, because [of the] scrutiny,” Rudolph said in a recent interview with Apple Music 1's Zane Lowe. “People didn’t have access to the show in the way that they do now when I was on it. People weren’t watching it from their phones the next day in just one sketch instead of watching the entire show.”
“I feel like people want to take a sound bite and create problems, and that’s become a business. It’s so ugly and it’s so not at all my life. It has nothing to do with me. So it just makes you shy away from wanting to put yourself out there,” she continued. Don’t worry: this isn’t anything bordering on the “woke killed comedy” genre of rant we’ve heard from certain, er, Pop-Tart-loving comedians in recent weeks. It sounds like Rudolph is, rightfully, just a little apprehensive about giving audiences too much of herself. Elsewhere in the interview, she referred to her characters as “a form of drag,” explaining that “there is no part of me that is interested in revealing every single layer of my soul to those that do not know me.”
“I go the extreme opposite. I wear armor,” she elaborated. “So all of my characters are huge… the art of drag is to be larger than life, the most female, female. It’s just wonderful to wear armor because your sweet little sensitive soul gets protected.” It’s also the reason she never did stand-up comedy, an art form she described as having an element of “nudity” to it that was completely unwelcome to her.
It’s also why she loved Beyoncé so much. “She doesn’t have to say a word about how wrong things are, and she’s using her artistry to do that. That’s huge. And also really commendable for such a big artist,” Rudolph said of Cowboy Carter. “It’s very difficult to put yourself out there and say, ‘I know I’m great.’ And it’s still never going to be good enough in certain situations. It takes a lot, especially today… I find that to be so incredibly beautiful on top of the fact that I think some of the songs are some of the most beautiful vocal work I’ve heard in years.”
You can watch Rudolph’s full Zane Lowe interview here: