Tina Fey on Friday revealed a “dirty secret” of “Saturday Night Live” to save the makers of a U.K. version a bit of stress.
At the Edinburgh TV Festival, presenter Graham Norton mentioned to the ex-“SNL” writer and star (1997-2006) that he could not believe British writers would stay up all night Tuesday, as American counterparts have, to finish sketches before table reads on Wednesday.
The till-the-wee-hours shifts are the stuff of “SNL” legend, but Fey got candid about their effectiveness.
“Here’s a dirty secret, you don’t have to do it that way, you could start in the morning,” she told Norton, according to PA News Agency via Scotland’s Dunfermline Press.
Fellow “SNL” alum Jason Sudeikis essentially agreed with Fey in an interview several years ago.
Asked if the process was “productive or just sort of by tradition,” the future “Ted Lasso” star replied:
“I do think it adds to kind of that breakneck pace, the mystique a little bit. But I do think it is a vestige of just tradition. There’s a lot of things there — Lorne [Michaels] has … a strong belief in hiring people for their first television job there, because there are so many things that are done there that are counterintuitive to people that have worked other places.”
“Saturday Night Live” in the U.K. is expected to launch next year and Michaels will serve as executive producer, The New York Times previously reported.
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