Ana Gasteyere on ‘Saturday Night Live’ in 1998 and singing the National Anthem in 2014.Photo:Mary Ellen Matthews/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty; Mark Sullivan/WireImage
Mary Ellen Matthews/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty; Mark Sullivan/WireImage
Ana Gasteyer’s classic “Schweddy Balls” sketch comes back to haunt her in the most interesting places.
The actress and comedian, 57, was part of a panel ofSaturday Night Livealumni who joined hosts Gary Dell’Abate and Jon Hein for a specialSNL on Stern RoundtableonHoward Stern’s SiriusXM channel, Howard 101, on Thursday, Feb. 6. At one point, Gasteyer brought up one of her most memorable “Delicious Dish” sketches, which featured guest hostAlec Baldwinas Pete Schweddy, a baker famous for his “Schweddy balls” desserts.
Ana Gasteyer, Molly Shannon and Alec Baldwin on ‘Saturday Night Live’ in 1998.Mary Ellen Matthews/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty
Mary Ellen Matthews/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty
During her six-season run onSNLfrom 1996 to 2002, Gasteyer’s Margaret Jo McCullen, co-host of the fictional NPR show “Delicious Dish” along withMolly Shannon’s Teri Rialto, became one of her most popular recurring characters. While Baldwin’s 1998 sketch certainly wasn’t the only “Delicious Dish” to become a sensation — a 2010 sketch featuringBetty Whitewas also a hit — “Schweddy Balls” remains a perennial gag, so to speak, more than 25 years later according to Gasteyer.
“I didn’t plan for that to be a recurring catchphrase, you know what I mean?” she said. “You don’t sit there and go, ‘This is the thing they’ll repeat.’ It just happens as they were saying. The world picks it up.”
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Gasteyer said she knew the sketch was special during the read-through for the 1998 episode, and in fact Baldwin later returned to reprise his Pete Schweddy in 2001.
Ana Gasteyer on the ‘SNL on Stern Roundtable’.Noam Galai/Getty
Noam Galai/Getty
“No one had imitated NPR pundits. No one had ever done that before and it’s such a fine line to sound like them and I think that, Ana, you did that so brilliantly,” Newman said of the Margaret Jo McCullen character.
“It was really comforting because you had headsets on,” Gasteyer explained. “It was really quiet. It was weird. Like I think they thought it was going to bomb the first time we did it because it’s so low energy and so quiet and I had done it at The Groundlings so I knew that it could work, in fact I auditioned with it, but when it was successful I remember people being kind of surprised, but it was always really relaxing because it was so quiet.”
That is, of course, until fans are shouting suggestive quotes at your during a major sporting event.
source: people.com
