Live from Columbia College, it’s Saturday Night!

Aidy Bryant (BA ’09) talks about landing her dream job on Saturday Night Live—”How Comedy Studies led me to The Second City stage and on to New York City.”

Growing up in Arizona, Aidy Bryant (BA ’09) “obsessed” over Saturday Night Live cast members like Molly Shannon, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler—and she even dressed up like SNL characters for Halloween. For college, she knew she wanted to come to Chicago, home of The Second City (famed launching pad for the SNL players). Hard work with Columbia’s Comedy Studies program and the Chicago improv scene paid off: Now in her second year at SNL, Bryant writes sketches and appears weekly as a repertory player.

I always felt wacky or quirky or weird in high school. And then when I got to Columbia, I was surrounded by other weirdos, other creatives, people with all kinds of interests and passions.

When I was a freshman, I would do my normal theatre classes by day. By night, I started taking classes at iO and other Chicago comedy theaters. So it was a lucky thing that the [Comedy Studies] program was just getting started as I was an upperclassman. I had done all these different things in the improv community, but I had never gotten my foot in at Second City.

It was a great way to start there, and really immerse myself in seeing the Mainstage and e.t.c. shows, and taking writing classes—really writing in a way that I hadn’t before. I really got my legs underneath me; ultimately, that led to me writing for Second City.

After working there for about two years, I was writing and performing on the e.t.c. stage, doing a two-hour sketch revue with five other cast members. I was very lucky in that Lorne [Michaels, Saturday Night Live creator and executive producer] and the producers came to see my show at Second City. Later that week, I was called to come and audition [for SNL]. So I put together a five-minute showcase of my best material, and then I was flown out to New York and did my five-minute audition. I did one more audition, and then I was hired.

My advice for aspiring comedians? Just get up in front of audiences as much as you can because the good experiences and the bad experiences, they all will make you a better performer, and you only learn from being in front of a big group of people that you don’t know.

That is really where I cut my teeth, doing that. And really, I did it all over Chicago. I went everywhere to be in front of an audience and practice honing my voice so that by the time I got to where I am, I know what I like to write, and I know my strengths, and I know my weaknesses. It really helps when you get into these high-pressure situations to know who you are as a performer. — As told to Kristi Turnbaugh

Aidy Bryant WEB EXTRAs:

Full-Time Funny

DEMO:How does the Saturday Night Live schedule look each week?
Aidy Bryant: You’re working six days a week. Monday you meet the hosts, you pitch to them. Tuesday you write all night, sometimes until seven or eight in the morning. Wednesday afternoon you read all the sketches at a table read. Wednesday night they choose those sketches that are possibly going to be in the show. Then you block half a scene Thursday and half on Friday, and Saturday is the day of the show. You do a quick run-through of everything in your costume and hair and then it’s time for dress rehearsal, which is at eight o’clock. By then it’s time for the show. So it’s pretty intense.

(Do It On My) Twin Bed

DEMO: What’s your proudest writing moment?
Aidy Bryant: You know, actually I just sort of had my proudest moment [when] Kate McKinnon and writers Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider and I wrote [(Do It On My) Twin Bed]. You’re throwing ideas around on Tuesday and then by Saturday it’s a full-blown music video—we look like the Pussycat Dolls. We were really proud of it and so much work went into from the directors and the art direction and the people who make the set. To see it come out like that—it was literally unbelievable. It was a dream come true.

On getting the job

DEMO: When did you find out you were cast on the show?
Aidy Bryant: [At the New York audition] they asked that I do some of the characters that I had done in the Second City show. So I adapted a couple of those things that were group or cast scenes into solo pieces. It was very nerve-racking because you do the audition where the host does the monologue, so that iconic spot on the stage. Half the battle is just not being nervous. [After,] in New York and I met with Lorne [Michaels, producer of SNL] and he was saying, “Well you’re very young.” I was a little bit like, “Oh, maybe I’m not going to get this.” Then at the very end of the meeting he was like, “But I think you’ll do very well here.” So I was like, “Does that mean I’m hired? Am I on SNL now?”

I shook his hand the producers stood up and gave me a hug, but I still wasn’t totally sure. So I left and I went to my hotel. I was sitting in my hotel, just sort of frozen, and then about an hour later I got a phone call from a producer being like, “Do you know that you got hired? Because you did.” I was like, “No, I didn’t know, thanks. I wasn’t sure.” He was like, “Well we could kind of tell you didn’t know.”

From Second City to the small screen

DEMO: What was the best advice from your first season?
Aidy Bryant: All the senior cast members were so gracious and helpful. I don’t know if there was one specific thing that someone told me, but it was just their little bits of kindness. I mean Fred [Armisen] and Jason [Sudeikis] and Bill [Hader] and Seth [Meyers] and Kenan [Thompson], all those people in my first season really helped. I didn’t know where to look [so I would ask], “Does it look like I’m looking at cue cards? Should I look in the camera? Can they see me if I’m over here? Should I turn out?” There are all these camera factors that I just wasn’t used to, because I was coming from sketch and theater backgrounds. So I leaned on [the veterans] really hard.

Top Image: Aidy Bryant, left, and Cecily Strong (pictured with Josh Hutcherson) write for and star in SNL’s recurring sketch “Girlfriends Talk Show.” “Fifty percent of my job is writing,” Bryant says. “Every cast member writes for the show. It’s a huge part of the job.”