Name: Punkie Johnson on Reveals What Working at SNL is Actually Like
Uploaded: 2023-02-07T18:34:10.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Punkie Johnson on Reveals What Working at SNL is Actually Like' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-02-07. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Punkie Johnson on Reveals What Working at SNL is Actually Like' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-02-07. Transcript available.

- The Joe Rogan Experience.
- That's the thing you have to do with SNL, right?
You have to constantly be coming up ideas for sketches, huh?
- Yeah, a lot of people don't get how,
I think mentally frustrating,
not frustrating, mentally exhausting.
Yeah, I get exhausted with SNL a lot.
Now, ask me to write a pilot, I'll write you a pilot.
I'll have fun with it, but a sketch is a different world.
It's a different world, it's a different ball game.
- It's not my world.
- It's, you know, SNL is a very hard job.
- Very hard job.
- It's not, it's, I mean, it's hard mentally,
it's hard physically, it's hard.
It, man, it's hard.
Now, let me tell you something, the perks are great.
I have a whole bunch of fun.
- I'm sure.
- I have fun with those people in there,
I have to have fun creating relationships, I have fun.
- You're also a part of a group that includes
Eddie Murphy, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd,
Phil Hartman.
- That feels good.
- Holy shit.
I mean, that's a crazy legacy.
Chris Rock.
- I walked through that building.
I walked through the building.
- Norm Macdonald.
- Like it's the palm trees, every day.
- Yeah.
- Every day. - That's wild.
- Every day I'm like, what the fuck are you doing here, bitch?
- Wild.
- Still, in my third year.
- How do you write?
Do you write in front of a computer?
Do you write, you just sit around and write things down
when they come to you?
What do you do?
- Well, it's a very fast, right?
The turnover over there is fast.
So it's like, you do the show Saturday, Sunday,
you can rest your mind if you want to,
but you gotta have something cooking and boiling
inside of your brain about Sunday night.
So then Monday we go, we pitch, we meet the hosts,
and then we pitch ideas.
- So what's a Sunday for you like?
- Sleep.
- Sleep?
- Sleep, sleep, no liquor.
I eat whatever I want and I sleep all day.
- But do you, is that when you're like prepping?
Do you get ready for Monday?
- Sometimes it depends.
If I have the strength, I'll call people and say,
hey, you know what you got this week?
I got this idea.
Let's figure out how to flush it out tomorrow,
which is a Monday, right?
So Mondays we go to work just to meet the hosts
and kind of just settle in.
We meet, hello, how you doing?
Like if it was you, hey.
Lauren will say, Joe Rogan, everybody.
We're all going to his office.
His office is about this big, maybe a little smaller.
And we all sit on the floor like preschoolers.
We've got our legs crossed.
And Lauren will say, we're gonna start with you, Rosebud.
And Rosebud pitches her idea to you.
How you doing, Joe?
She'll say something.
You are a man that has a vision
of exotic coffee shops.
So you open up a coffee shop
that's full of strippers
and you call it T-Search or some shit.
Like just stupid, just something stupid.
It could be a real idea.
It could be something fake.
I always pitch something stupid.
Look, I remember we went to work on Black History Day,
on Martin Luther King Day.
And my pitch was, hey, Aubrey, you are the captain of the Holiday Police
Department.
And you come and fine Lorne Michaels for having all the black people at work on
Martin Luther King Day.
The office was busting out laughing.
Because I go in there, I say what everybody want to say, because I don't give a
fuck, you know what I'm saying?
I just be having fun.
And then after that, you leave the pitch and you go, you can either stay and
talk in groups and figure out what you're gonna do for Tuesday or you leave.
I leave or I stay, blah, blah, blah.
And then Tuesday, you write all day.
We get to the office 2, 3 o'clock.
We don't leave till 2, 3 o'clock.
And then Wednesdays, you got to wake up at 8, go over your sketches with your
writers, fix it.
Maybe you'll go back to sleep about 10:30, 11, sleep for 30 minutes, get back
up, go to work until 11 p.m., 12 p.m.
If your sketch gets picked, you know, because you got to produce it.
So also at this job, I'm learning how to produce, learning how to direct,
learning how to make fast edits.
Because you got to pick your set.
You got to pick the clothes that people are going to wear.
You got to pick the outfits.
You got to pick the wigs.
You got to, if you write the sketch and they get picked, you got to do it all.
Of course, you have help, but you're learning the stuff.
Did you do any of that before you went to SNL?
No.
No theater, no nothing.
I went to an acting school called the Actors Boot Camp, but that was that.
That's neither here nor there.
Yeah.
Well, I think acting class is probably in some ways a little bit like comedy
class.
You know, I think there's good ones in terms of acting class.
There's legitimate, like real good places where people learn.
They really do.
And then there's also like acting lessons that are given by people that weren't
really good actors.
Yeah.
They didn't really make it as an actor and then they're teaching it.
Oh, yeah.
I know a lot of people that'll teach you something because they've done it.
Yes.
And they.
That's the problem with comedy, right?
Mm-hmm.
Like the comedy classes, they're not being taught by Dave Chappelle.
Right.
You know, they're being taught by someone who's probably not that good at
comedy, which is why
they're teaching classes.
Yeah, that's true.
There's a lot of that.
I do agree with that.
But it does get you on stage though.
Mm-hmm.
That's the benefit of it.
I, um, when I did get to SNL, a lot of people did go to school.
They did?
They went to acting school?
They went to like improv school, Second City, Ground Links and all of that.
Because the moment I get to know people over there, I'm like, oh, y'all went to
school.
Yeah.
Oh, I came from a little place with black walls called the Comedy Store.
I don't know nothing about this.
It's a type of school though.
You know?
It's a type of performance school for sure.
That's what I'm saying.
So I'm just, and with that, that's me saying to myself, what are you doing?