I will never forget where I was the first time I asked a middle-aged man sitting next to me whether lien was pronounced “lee-EN” or “lean.” I guess nobody could forget a thing like that.
“It’s lean,” he said.
“I know in French, it would be ‘lee-EN,’ ” I went on. “I took French in high school.” For some reason, he didn’t seem impressed.
“I have a mortgage,” he told me. “And it’s pronounced ‘lean.’ ”
We were in midtown Manhattan at a commercial audition for a mortgage company, and you could have cut the tension in that waiting room with a radial arm saw. My line was “That’s news to me. Are you sure?” Then I must have said something about a lien, but I don’t recall exactly what. All I remember is that I needed to know how to pronounce it, and fast.
But the reason I remember that audition so clearly has nothing to do with home loans or the increased foreclosure rates that had already led to a subprime mortgage crisis that steamy summer of 2008. The reason is that as I was leaving the building (I had gone with my French pronunciation, “lee-EN,” and was promptly corrected by the director), I checked my voicemail. I had a message from my manager telling me that Lorne Michaels wanted to meet with me at 5:00.
What?!
A couple of nights earlier, I had performed in a comedy showcase at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Chelsea. While not advertised as such, the showcase was essentially a first-round audition for Saturday Night Live; Lorne Michaels and several producers from the show had been in the audience.
And now Lorne Michaels wanted to meet with me at 5:00!
I immediately panicked. Should I go home to shower first? I had just come out of the audition, so I already had clean hair and some tinted Chapstick on. How much fancier could I get? I wasn’t sure—but I raced home anyway and then decided there was no time to shower. I called my manager. “Why are you still at your apartment?” he cried. “You need to be at 30 Rock in an hour!”
I ran out of my apartment!
I sprinted to the subway station at Seventy-Second Street. I wanted to feel like Mary Tyler Moore! I knew that she threw her hat in the air, but I didn’t have a hat!
I made a conscious decision to forget about the hat, and instead I boarded the 1 train. When I emerged from underground at Fiftieth and Broadway, I took a deep, focused breath. I knew that I needed to quiet my mind; lucky for me, there is no place to quiet your mind like the northernmost edges of Manhattan’s Times Square. Memories from the UCB show came flooding over me, and I allowed myself to sit in the waters of reminiscence for a moment—but not long enough to get pruney.
The performance two evenings earlier had been broken into two parts. The first part was a character showcase; each comedian had about five minutes to present whatever character he or she chose. I had chosen Marie-Christine, a Parisian teenager whose dog had recently drowned in the Seine. The second part was an improvisation panel moderated by the artistic director, Anthony King. We all sat in a row of chairs onstage, each playing a new character while Anthony asked us all sorts of nonsense questions.
For the panel, I had played a character who was a combination of a former teacher of mine and a piece that I had written for McSweeney’s. This former teacher—whom I will not name, because I want all of my former teachers to try to guess which one it is. What a fun game for the former teachers!—is a delightful woman with unwavering optimism. The McSweeney’s character grew out of a piece I wrote called “A Guest Columnist Still Getting the Hang of It.” This guest columnist can, both fortunately and unfortunately, see all sides of every issue, and has trouble deciding on a firm stance. I thought this would be a good choice for a character panel because the game of vacillating between opposite opinions while being relentlessly cheerful felt like a nice challenge and—more important, given the circumstances—something that I could pull off.
The other people in the showcase were Charlie Sanders, Eugene Cordero, Nate Lang, Aubrey Plaza, Jeff Hiller, Sue Galloway, and Kate McKinnon. I knew all of these crazy cats from the theatre, though I have not received their official blessing to refer to them in this paragraph as “crazy cats.” Nonetheless, being with these crazy cats was the best part of the night. Hanging out in the greenroom beforehand wasn’t stress-filled; it was fun. Obviously, I felt nervous, but I was mostly just excited. It felt like an amped-up UCB show with friends, and not an audition at all.
(Of course, it was an audition, arguably the most important audition of my life, and I needed to ace it.)
I left the theatre that night on a high. The audience had been enthusiastic and on our side the entire time. I felt satisfied because I had gotten laughs, and I felt pleased because I would not have done anything differently. As the great Kelly Troy would have said, I had left everything on the field.
I must have been smiling to myself during this reverie, because back in Midtown, a drunk businessman was asking me “what in heaven’s hell [was I] so happy about.” I looked at that drunk businessman, gave him a huge grin, and I told him I was on my way to the meeting of a lifetime. Then I started running because what if the drunk businessman was an angry drunk?
I entered the Forty-Ninth Street entrance of 30 Rock as instructed and handed my ID to security. I immediately began trying to win over the guard, very aware of the possibility that he might be good friends with Lorne Michaels. “I sure was tired that day,” I told the guard, pointing to my driver’s license photo. “Probably hungover.” I laughed and leaned in close. “Remember those days?” I leaned back out and waved my hands in the air. “You know I do!” I yelled. The guard gave me my temporary badge and pointed toward the elevators. I could tell he would rave about me to Lorne Michaels.
I rode the elevator to the eighth floor of Rockefeller Plaza. A place I never, not in a million years, could have imagined I might visit in a non-tour capacity. Yes, I had interned at Late Night with Conan O’Brien for six months in 2005, but that studio was on the sixth floor. The eighth floor was two floors up—but a million miles away! The elevator doors parted, and I checked in with a page sitting at a desk. “I’m Ellie Kemper and I’m here to meet Michael Lornes,” I heard myself saying. The page giggled, and I corrected myself. “The name you have on your list might be ‘Elizabeth,’ not ‘Ellie,’ ” I added. “That’s my legal name. It’s also my confirmation name.” The page told me that she had “Ellie” on her list, and that she would escort me to Lorne Michaels’s office. I realized then that I had said Lorne Michaels’s name wrong; I thought about throwing myself out the window right then and there but decided that a crash would make a bigger scene than any rumor about mixing up Lorne Michaels’s name. So I kept walking. I sat down in a small antechamber, and the page asked if I wanted any coffee or water. I knew that she was testing my stamina, and so I told her I needed nothing. She nodded and left, and I sat in that chair—very still, and very thirsty—for the following two or maybe three hours.
Over those hours, several people on the SNL staff popped in to introduce themselves, and all of those people seemed nice. Still, I felt as though I might throw up at any minute. This was an enormous moment in my life, a high-pressure situation for which I had had zero time to prepare. Furthermore, unlike many of my comedy friends, I did not possess an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of SNL; this was causing me a large amount of anxiety. As a teenager, I had watched the show most weekends, but I had been just as interested in doing well on my SATs, passing my driver’s test, and racking up more community service hours than anyone else in my class so that I could, once and for all, establish myself as the most benevolent student at our school. Lorne Michaels and Saturday Night Live were from a universe that was not quite my own. I was Aladdin at Princess Jasmine’s palace—a street urchin in the midst of royalty, I had no business being here!
At last, a young woman entered the waiting area and invited me into Lorne Michaels’s office. The smell of hot popcorn beckoned me, and I fell into step behind this lady. She opened the door, and there, behind a regular-sized desk, sat Lorne Michaels. And there, also behind that desk but slightly to the right of it, sat Seth Meyers! This calmed me down immediately. I had seen Seth Meyers perform at the UCB in Asssscat, and he seemed both kind and normal. Kind and normal people put me at ease, and I could feel my heart rate drop ever so slightly.
I took a seat in the chair opposite these two men and folded my hands. Lorne Michaels1 introduced himself and thanked me for coming. Then he asked in which part of the city I lived. It turned out that we both lived on the Upper West Side, and Lorne Michaels mentioned a great bodega on Seventy-Fourth Street. I told him I would definitely have to try it.
After that, he asked me if I was trying to be an actress. I knew in that moment I was a goner. How on Earth was I supposed to answer this question? If I said, “No, sir. I already am an actress,” then would I sound delusional? Other than several commercials, I had no acting credits to my name. Lorne Michaels personally knew Tom Hanks and Nicole Kidman—real actors and actresses who went to parties in the Hollywood Hills! On the other hand, if I got on SNL, wouldn’t Lorne Michaels want credit for turning me into an actress? There was no right answer; there were only more traps. So, I said, “Yeah!”
Lorne Michaels seemed satisfied with this answer.
There is only one other part of the conversation that I remember. Lorne Michaels asked me “what era of the show” I had grown up on. I smiled. My mind was all white curtains and pillows. I could think of nothing. I had watched Saturday Night Live at Emily Sinclair’s house most Saturdays because her parents hadn’t seemed to mind if we stayed up late, but I found that I could not remember any human words in this moment at 30 Rock. I don’t mean that I couldn’t just remember any cast members or any sketches from SNL. I mean that I couldn’t remember any words.
I kept smiling, and Lorne Michaels clarified his question. “I don’t mean that you grew up working on the show,” he said. “Like how someone grows up in the circus.”
“Yeah, like I’m the sword swallower!” I shouted.
“But what era of the show did you grow up watching?” he continued.
The only words in the universe that entered my head in that moment were these: “Gilda Radner.” Luckily, Gilda Radner was definitely a cast member of Saturday Night Live. But unluckily for me, she was a cast member from 1975 to 1980. I was twenty-eight years old at the time of that meeting with Lorne Michaels, and if I had supposedly grown up watching Gilda Radner on the show, then that would have put me somewhere between forty-five and fifty years old.
However, Gilda Radner was the only name that I could think of. I was ready to say it. I was ready to tell Lorne Michaels that I was not, in fact, in my late twenties, but instead was approaching middle age, when Seth Meyers stepped in.
“Was it Mike Myers? Dana Carvey?” he asked, helpfully.
“Wayne’s World” was all I said.
I could tell Lorne Michaels was impressed.
The meeting continued, though what we talked about, I might never know. All I do know is that Lorne Michaels mentioned seeing me the following week, and I smiled again. “Yes,” I probably said. I thanked both of them for taking the time to meet with me, and then I was escorted to the elevators for one final ride. I turned the mention of seeing me next week over and over again in my head. What did he mean? Do I have an official audition? Do I have to go in for another round of interviews? Or did he just mean we might see each other at the Seventy-Fourth Street bodega if we both happen to run out of milk at the same time?
Though I couldn’t make full sense of these mysterious words, I walked out of 30 Rock calmly. Then, as soon as I hit Sixth Avenue, I began to run. I ran all the way to Central Park and then I slowed down to a speed walk, all the way to Seventy-Second Street. I felt like soaring! I really had just had the meeting of a lifetime. I tried calling my best friend Jo, but nobody answered. It was time to celebrate, so I walked into the Utopia Diner and ordered a large Diet Coke. I reminded myself that I had just decided I should be celebrating, so I changed my order to a regular Coke. Life was for the living! Jo called me back, and I told her all four details of the meeting that I could remember at that time. She was as ecstatic and giddy as I was. She asked if I was going out celebrating with my friends. I took one look around at my fellow Utopians—average age: sixty-two; average hair color: bald—and smiled. I told Jo that I already was out celebrating with my friends. Then I went home and fell asleep without even removing my tinted Chapstick.
The next day, I was informed by my manager that I would go the following week to audition in person, at 30 Rock, for Lorne Michaels and all the producers from Saturday Night Live.
What?!
I had about five days to prepare for the audition. The good news was that I had been doing Feeling Sad/Mad with Ellie Kemper at the UCB for a couple of months, so I already had several characters as options. I was told that we would have five minutes to perform however many characters we wanted, but that at least two characters had to be celebrity impressions.
And now I must interrupt my own story to tell you a little bit about Love.
You might remember a certain man of mine, a robust Jewish gentleman of Eastern European descent named Michael Koman. Or, maybe you don’t remember him—because Reader, I have not yet told you all that much about him. Sure, I have alluded to him here and there—“my boyfriend,” “my fiancé,” “Michael”—but what more could you be expected to know? Reader, you should know that he is a comedy writer. This information will come in handy in about two paragraphs. But you should also know this: like many couples, Michael Koman and I dated for several years before we got married. And yet, at the time of this whirlwind week of mine, Michael and I happened to have been on what is commonly known as “a break.” We thought that we might be better off as friends.
We couldn’t have been more wrong!
Nonetheless, at the time, we thought that we were right, and we continued to talk on the phone as friends almost daily. And so, when I arrived at 30 Rock the afternoon of my meeting with Lorne Michaels, I called someone who also had “Michael” in his name: Michael. “Michael,” I whispered on the phone just before entering the turnstile to get on the elevator. “I am about to meet with Lorne Michaels in his office.” I could hear my friend Michael sniffle. He paused. I imagined that his emotions must be engulfing him, and that he was overcome with happiness for me. I opened my mouth to tell him that I was fine, that I would calm down, but he spoke first. “That’s amazing, El,” he croaked. I smiled, instantly soothed. “I think I’m getting a cold,” Michael went on.
Oh, Cupid, you devil you!
Though Michael was battling some mild summer sneezes that particular afternoon, he made a masterful recovery in the days to come. And he spent endless hours speaking to me on the phone about characters, monologues, bits, and other ideas for my audition. We met for coffee, lunch, and one evening of pie. From a comedy standpoint, his help was invaluable, and as a friend, Michael was as supportive as someone possibly could be. At one point over a bad omelette at the Village Den, I realized that I was no longer concerned with the outcome of my SNL audition. I just felt very happy that Michael was in my life.
But then I left the diner to get on the subway and realized that if I didn’t absolutely nail this audition I would kill myself.
I knew the day that I was auditioning—Thursday, August 7—but I did not find out the exact time until that morning. At 10 a.m., my manager emailed me to say that I should arrive at 30 Rock at four, but that my audition wouldn’t be for a while after that. Their hair and makeup department would get us ready, we would fill out paperwork, and then we would wait. I decided to arrive by two, a full two hours early, you know, just to be safe. Before getting on the train, I bought a turkey and cheese sandwich from Fairway. I sat down on a bench outside the grocery store and began to eat. As I was opening my mouth to take a second bite, I noticed that tucked inside the folds of smoked turkey was a dead grasshopper. A grasshopper. If you know anything about life or omens or insects, you will know that a grasshopper is the universal symbol of good luck. I threw my head back and laughed with all the joy there was to have in this world. Then I smashed the grasshopper repeatedly with my foot and threw the sandwich into the street. I mean, I had almost just eaten a grasshopper! Disgusting! I dug through my backpack until I found a squashed S’mores Luna Bar, made sure there weren’t any bugs in it, and headed for the train.
As soon as I arrived at 30 Rock, I went to the hair and makeup room on the eighth floor. After that, I was led to a large, windowless room where I filled out what must have been forty-five minutes’ worth of paperwork. Then, I sat in a chair next to maybe eighteen other actors. I knew Nate Lang and John Mulaney from UCB, but I didn’t recognize anyone else. Maybe they were from LA or Chicago? Had they also referred to Lorne Michaels as Michael Lornes? There was no way to know for sure.
Eventually, someone led us downstairs, one by one, to a dressing room outside the studio. Because commentary on the 2008 Summer Olympics was being broadcast from the SNL studios in 8H, we auditioned in Late Night with Conan O’Brien’s studio in 6A. 6A! A familiar face, at last! I had only been in that studio a handful of times doing bits on Conan, but it was reassuring to be in a space that felt—well, not quite like home, but like a studio I had performed in a few times before.
John Mulaney auditioned just ahead of me. We passed each other in the narrow hallway between the stage and the main floor, and he told me that he felt like all energy had just left his body. He was done. I was next. I would be able to feel like all energy had just left my body in a matter of minutes. I was in the home stretch!
I performed five characters that evening. My two celebrity impressions were Miley Cyrus and Renée Zellweger, and my three showcase characters were Miss Sullivan, a terrified substitute teacher; Taya, an eccentric frozen yogurt server; and Mary, a woman on a trip in Tahiti breaking up with her husband back home in Pennsylvania. I had come up with the characters of both Taya and Mary that week.
And suddenly, just like that—my audition was over. All I remember is that the lights in the audience were not dimmed, I could see Lorne Michaels and the five or six other people sitting there, and there was pleasant laughter throughout my audition. In fact, though everyone warns you beforehand that no one will laugh during your audition, I have never spoken to any person who has auditioned for SNL who has experienced this. That’s right. Even the brass enjoys a chuckle, guys!
I left the building feeling drained. I was so tired. All energy and any reserves had indeed been completely zapped from my system. But do you know what often saves you when energy cannot?
A crazy little thing called Love.
That same night, a bunch of Conan writers were meeting up at Hurley’s, a three-floor saloon. Michael had texted me to see how the audition went and invited me to join them. Reader, I married him. Four years later. That night, I met him at Hurley’s. The Conan gang and Michael and I shared some brews and classic pub grub, and when I finally fell asleep that night, I felt very happy. Not only because if I ever met with Lorne Michaels again I would know exactly what era of SNL I had grown up on (Wayne’s World), but also because somebody else must have paid for our appetizers—I never got a bill and no bartender stopped me on the way out! Mostly, though, I was happy because I had spent the evening laughing with Michael.
But I never did hear back from Saturday Night Live, so I’m guessing I didn’t get the part.
1 You will notice that I keep referring to Lorne Michaels by both his first and last name. That’s because certain people—Tina Fey, Steve Carell, Michelle Obama—should be called by both their first and last names (unless you are family, spouse, or personal surgeon).