Girl Walks Into a Bar . . .: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle

by Rachel Dratch

  A lot of people move out to Chicago thinking, “I’ll do Second City, and then on to Saturday Night Live!” You soon lose your singular SNL ambition when you realize everyone has this same dream and the odds of actually getting on SNL are too slim to hold on to such a specific vision. You also realize that there are many other pathways to make a career in comedy after Second City besides SNL. SNL would come scouting once in a while but not on any predictable basis. They happened to come right when I had gotten onto the mainstage, but that time, they picked almost every one of the actors to audition (from the mainstage, the E.T.C. stage next door, and the annex stage in the burbs) and I wasn’t one of them. By my third and fourth shows on the mainstage, I started to be mentioned in reviews, and I went on to win two Jeff Awards. (That’s the Chicago equivalent of the Tonys, so if having a Tony impresses you, dial that reaction down by about 50 percent and bask in my half-glow.) Three years later, I was still on the mainstage, about to leave in two months, and lo and behold, SNL came out to scout again. This time, I was picked to go audition for Saturday Night Live!

  For the SNL audition, you create all your own material. The basic guideline is to do three characters and three celebrity impressions. I remember I did my Boston teen character; and a character that never made it onto SNL, a former Broadway child star now an adult but still wearing her child-star dress and talking in her child-star voice; and an Eastern European cleaning woman who had been through all these atrocities and now worked in an office where people complained about piddly stuff like bad coffee. I hadn’t really done any impressions at Second City—for the audition, I did Calista Flockhart because that’s an impression I had randomly come up with while watching Ally McBeal in the comfort of my living room. I also did Christiane Amanpour, and as sort of a cheat, I did Madeleine Albright addressing the Teletubbies. I just made a Madeleine Albright face and threw on a Teletubbies voice.

  Here’s the thing about the audition. They tell you your audition is at three. You get there on time. You can’t believe it—you are AUDITIONING FOR SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE!!! You are sent to a dressing room. You wait. You wait some more. You wait more. It’s now six o’clock. You are finally called in to audition. When you walk into the audition, there are no pleasantries. No “Hi! And what are YOU going to be doing for us? Greeeeat.” You just get up on the stage, and a stage manager says, “Five, four, three, two, go.” I had been warned that Lorne Michaels and the producers probably wouldn’t laugh but not to let that throw me. It happened that because I was the last one of the day, a bunch of people from the office had milled in and were standing in back and they were laughing a lot, which of course helped. When the audition was over, I remembered the whole thing, always a good sign for me. When an audition is a blur afterward, I knew I wasn’t good. There was one thing I didn’t remember, though. Later I realized, “Oh my God! My audition was on that stage! The stage where the host does the monologue! I was standing on the SNL stage!”

  I felt it could not have gone any better. Whether or not they picked me, at least I knew I had done my best. And … I had instant success and was off on my path to the top like the rising star that I was? Nope. Ol’ Two-Time Dratch strikes again! I wasn’t hired. That year they hired Jimmy Fallon, Horatio Sanz, and Chris Parnell. They told me maybe next year they’d be hiring women, but I let go of the dream, with a genuinely OK feeling about it.

  A year later, I did get to audition again. You don’t want to go in and do the same stuff you did the year before. I had already used up my best stuff in the previous audition, so now I had to break out “second string” characters. This time I didn’t feel quite as good about it. I called up my mom and told her I didn’t think I got it. They said they’d let me know by August 15, but I wasn’t holding my breath. August 15 came and went without a phone call, and I wasn’t too surprised.

  Two weeks later, I got a message on my answering machine. (This was 1999, back in the days of answering machines.) “Lorne wants to meet with you in NYC.” I flew to New York, sat on the couch outside his office for a few hours, and then had a ten-minute chat with Lorne.

  The meeting wasn’t any sort of interview situation like “So, what do you hope to bring to the job?” I’m not really sure what we talked about. I remember him telling me that when Candice Bergen would host, Jane Curtin might have less to do that week. It was almost like he was telling me what it would be like if I got to join the cast. And I’ve heard rumor he has those meetings to make sure you aren’t crazy.

  My meeting with Lorne in his office ended with him telling me he’d let me know about the job in a week. A week passed. Oh yes, I was counting! And this was the last possible day of “the week.” I was walking around with my brand-new cell phone every second of the day (again, 1999, we had all just switched from pagers). There I was, in the shower, the bathroom, Pilates class with my trusty phone. No call. Finally, at six P.M. Los Angeles time—I get THE CALL! “We have Lorne Michaels for you,” says a voice on the phone. And there he was.

  “Hello, Rachel.”

  “Hi!”

  “I’m up here in Toronto, but someone from NBC will be calling to set up the deal.”

  “WHAT DOES THAT MEAN!!!?” I’m thinking.

  “Um … does that mean I got the job?”

  Long pause, which probably was actually two seconds.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh! Thank you.” (Screaming inside!) “Thank you so much!”

  Hang up phone. Scream and jump around. Call parents. Call friends. Scream and jump around some more. Cut to third-grade Rachel getting the news. She screams and jumps around too.

  It was ten years almost to the day since I had arrived in Chicago, covered in flour.

  Dreams Do Come True!

  (And May Be Accompanied by Debilitating Psychological Torture)

  You could probably tell I was the new girl by my unbridled excitement and my unkempt eyebrows. I hadn’t touched them before getting hired for SNL. What did I know of the importance of brow-shaping to being a lady? At SNL I was immediately whisked into a world of excitement and GLAMOUR! I got my photo taken in the studio for the opening credits, and if you recall, David Motherf’ing Bowie was rehearsing with his band and singing “Rebel Rebel.” RIGHT THERE! WHILE I WAS GETTING MY PICTURE TAKEN TO BE ON SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE!! To this day, I can’t hear the song “Rebel Rebel” without thinking of the fact that whatever else happens in life, my gazillion-to-one dream came true.

  SNL gives you a month to find your own apartment, so at first I was staying in the Doubletree Suites in Times Square. Times Square is any native New Yorker’s most avoided part of the city because of the crowds and the tourists, but of course I didn’t mind. I felt like (please say in Liza Minnelli voice) “I’m in New York City! The lights! The crowds! I’m livin’ the dream!” Each day I would walk to 30 Rockefeller Plaza, having no idea where the hell I was in the city. I had no orientation of east and west, north and south. I just knew to turn right out of the hotel, and right on Forty-Ninth Street. Oh yes, I was gritty. It was just like Patti Smith.

  My first event there was the twenty-fifth anniversary show, and as a new cast member, I would get to sit in the audience. I would be surrounded by every major person who had hosted the show, plus every big musical guest. Any comedy idol I could think of—Steve Martin, Bob Newhart, Bill Murray—was there buzzing around. When I arrived, a producer said, “Where’ve you been? You have to get in hair and makeup!” What? But I was merely there to sit in the audience! No matter. They had a dress for me to wear, and presented me to Michaelanthony (yes, that is one word), the hairstylist, who gave me a crazy fun ’do. And while I was sitting in the makeup chair, there in the same little room were Lily Tomlin, Dan Aykroyd, and Elvis Costello. This was in-sane.

  And then, after that crazy intro to the dream job, here it was: the very first episode of the season and my national television debut on Saturday Night Live! Jerry Seinfeld was the host. I was going to be playing a child beauty pageant contestant on “Week
end Update.” The character was sort of on the same family tree as the child star I had used for my audition. My mom came down to watch the show in the live audience. And the biggest thrill of all—Don Pardo was going to say my name. I was ready for The! Most! Thrilling! Moment! Of! My! Life!

  The! Most! Thrilling! Moment! Of! My! Life! … was going to have to wait. After dress rehearsal, one of the producers came into my dressing room and informed me that my piece was cut. My pink-and-white pageant dress hung on the hook in my dressing room to punctuate the moment, and to mock me. In my mind, the piece had gone well, but in this whole new world, what did I know? I had my first intro to the long tradition of having to answer everyone-you-know’s phone calls, explaining why you didn’t appear on the show—in this instance, on the night of my big debut. I didn’t know to give them the warning that it might not happen. I dusted myself off and was ready for Week Two.

  Week Two! Hosted by Heather Graham! Musical guest Marc Anthony. Another scene! … Cut after dress.

  Week Three … Hosted by Norm MacDonald! Musical guests Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg! And still waiting for The! Most! Thrilling! Moment! Of! My! Life!

  See, what I didn’t realize is that Lorne is very careful about your first appearance on the show. He wants you to really knock it out of the park and do something that will wow the audience, not come on with a piece that just goes OK. My child beauty pageant star did just adequately—it didn’t kill. Finally, on that third show, I got to appear as Calista Flockhart, making the same face I had made screwing around in my living room, only now on national TV. I understood why Lorne made me wait for my debut—I would end up doing that impression many times on the show, and I even got a Cheers in TV Guide for that first episode. Lorne puts a lot of thought into the show and he is very hands-on with his decisions. He didn’t create the show only to delegate and just sit up in some golden tower (although he may well own a golden tower as one of his vacation homes).

  I was the only new cast member the season I was hired, and as you can gather, the powers that be don’t give you a handbook telling you, “Oh, welcome aboard and here’s how everything works!” You are just thrown into the pool—sink or swim. So I will tell you now. This way, if you are ever on SNL, you will be prepared. Here it is, reader:

  YOUR UNOFFICIAL GUIDE TO BEING ON SNL.

  THE FIRST STEP is getting your scene on the show. This occurs at the read-through on Wednesday afternoon. You’ve had virtually no sleep, for you have been up the entire previous night writing. So on Wednesday, the whole cast and the host and Lorne are seated around a giant table, and you all read through or, I should say, perform there at the table, all of the scenes that have been submitted that week. Usually, that’s about forty scenes. Virtually every employee of the show is in the room—people from costumes, sets, hair, sound—everyone crammed into the room to hear what possible scenes they may be working on that week. Your scene is read. Sometimes it gets big laughs! Yay! Sometimes it tanks and gets silence. Boooo! By the end of the whole process, the bigwigs—that is, Lorne, a few of the producers, the head writers, and the host—all go behind closed doors and pick which scenes will be in for the week. You hang out in the offices, joke around with cast mates, or drink some wine that has been pilfered from a cabinet somewhere. A few hours later, someone says, “The picks are in!” and you go look at a list, much as you would if you were auditioning for the high school play, to see if your scene has been circled. Sometimes your scene that killed at the table is in! Yay! Sometimes, to your utter dismay, your scene that killed is not in, for reasons that you will never know, so you learn to not even bother asking what went on behind that Great Closed Door. Maybe the male host really wanted to play a woman, so he picked that Hooters scene instead. But that is just your speculation. Often a scene that you found not funny at all is in. Do not question. Someone probably thinks the same about your scene when it gets in. It is all subjective and will make you insane. But this week … your scene is in! Yay! Tell all your friends! WAIT!! You soon learn. DON’T TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS!

  There is still a gauntlet to run before you are on TV. You see, Lorne and the producers pick a few more scenes for the dress rehearsal than will make it to the live show. There is a dress rehearsal at eight P.M. on Saturday in front of a live audience, and judging from how your scene goes there, it could still be cut before air. After the dress rehearsal, everyone crams into Lorne’s office at about 10:30 P.M. to sit on the floor or a couch arm, and up on a bulletin board the list of scenes that are in is on one side, and the scenes that were cut are on the other side … the BAD side!! Some weeks, you are all over the show before dress rehearsal and you walk in to see your three scenes are all on the BAD side of the board, so you end up on the bench that week. But lucky for you, this week, your scene is still in! Yay! Tell all your friends! WAIT!! DON’T TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS!

  You see, gentle reader, your scene is at the end of the show. It’s the last scene of the night. Because the show is live, the timing is only an estimate. Quite often, the last scene of the show is cut for time. It’s all very frenetic when you find this out. There you are in your chicken suit, excited to do your big chicken scene, and someone runs through the hallway breathlessly saying, “THE CHICKEN SCENE IS CUT!” You dejectedly take off your chicken head. But you still say good nights with your chicken body on, ’cause darn it, someone’s going to see and think, “Hey! What’s that chicken costume? Oh darn it, that looks really funny! I bet we missed out on a really funny scene there!”

  After the show on Saturday night, each cast member gets a limo and you can pile your friends or out-of-town visitors in and head to the party. The parties don’t usually get too crazy—they are held in various restaurants around the city, and people sit at the tables with their visitors. The parties serve as the big sigh of relief after all the work that week. Outsiders picture the parties as these debauched crazy affairs with comedians hanging off the chandeliers. That may have been true in the old days, but in my time, looking around the room, you might think the drug of choice was calamari.

  As the party winds down for the evening, you ask your friends, “Are you going to the after-after?” The after-after-parties go from around four A.M. until the sun is up, and are held in random dive bars throughout the city. They are a bit more raucous than the after-parties, only because you aren’t seated at tables; sometimes there is dancing, and by that hour, people have consumed more alcohol. (My first few years there, I always went to both parties and would stumble home at eight in the morning, sometimes with show makeup still on my face and wig glue still crusted near my ears. Perhaps the most memorable after-after-party was thrown by Tracy Morgan, waaay down at the bottom of Manhattan. We all piled into our cars to go to parts unknown and ended up at a modern apartment building in an area of town I didn’t even know existed. Upon entering, we found that interspersed through this party, to serve up cocktails or possibly sexual favors, were stripper ladies who were all of a very specific type. I think whoever organized the party—maybe one of Tracy’s cronies?—must have been into short, like five feet tall, Latina ladies of square and stocky build. Each and every lady had the look of an ancient Mayan crammed into black fishnets and garter belts, with red headband tiaras on their heads for extra sexiness. I think I stayed at that party about fifteen minutes, and it served as a tipping point—perhaps I had reached an age when I didn’t have to go to every after-after-party).

  Maybe you had a great show on Saturday and you introduced a new character that was a big hit. Maybe you weren’t in the show at all. You have Sunday to bask in your glow or to lick your wounds, because come Monday, the whole process starts all over again, and you better have some new ideas. Oh, and just so you know, the host this week is Christopher Walken, and he’s already doing his “Continental” character, and since it’s an election year, there’s going to be a seven-minute debate sketch, and for some reason, Jay-Z is playing an extra three songs. This all leaves one and a half slots for any new scenes to be picked fo
r the week. Happy Writing! Your unofficial guide is finished! Now fly! Fly, my little comedy star, and I’ll see you at the after-party! I’m gonna do a ton of calamari, so if I don’t say hi, that’s why—I’m gonna be totally f’d up on calamari. Luv n’ Kisses, Rachel

  The most fun part of Saturday Night Live for me was just that—Saturday night and the live show itself. Sometimes people would say, “It’s not really live, is it?” YES! It is! It says so right in the title! When you are sitting at home, watching it all on TV, the actor playing the old lady in the scene right before the commercial break who is now an elf when we come back had to transform in those two minutes. If you ever get to see the show live in the audience, then you see that each actor has their own hair, makeup, and wardrobe people, and everyone’s running around to get to the next scene. Meanwhile, the sets are being moved around frantically. It’s a fascinating operation. And no, I can’t get you tickets.

  My least favorite night of the week at SNL was probably writing night. As I said, everyone stays there all night long, I mean until the sun comes up, and you hope you have an idea that week. As an actor on the show, you have to come up with your own stuff because you can’t wait around and hope that a writer will just hand you a fully formed character. That did happen to me a few times, most notably with a creature I played who had an arm coming out of its head. That creature, who—little-known fact—is named Qterplx, was from the mind of writer Scott Wainio and made its first appearance as the illegitimate child of Angelina Jolie and her brother after they shared that kiss at the Oscars. Other than that, for the most part, I thought up my own characters, as was true for the other actors as well.