Michael Che Explains Why Hosting SNL Is So Brutal

0:01 Hello, I'm Johnny Mack with your daily comedy news. Let's see how much voice I have left. And this is the third show. What are these I'm doing? And I burned out my voice on number one. Michael Che is sharing his thoughts about working on Saturday Night Live. He told Trevor Noah, SNL is such a vulnerable place for everybody. For us, we work there. We're there all the time. We're comfortable. But he said he's always fielding questions about who's the worst and who's the best celebrity host. Che said it's really not fair to judge somebody based on their time there. They're there for a week. It's scary. It's fast. He says SNL is unique. There's no way to prepare for it unless you just do it all the time. Che said it's hard to trust the process as an outsider, especially if you don't do comedy at all.

0:47 A lot of times people, they have a rough go because it's not because they're bad people, just because it's a scary situation. There's a lot of people that after the show, they're like, man, thank you so much. Or man, that was crazy. You guys do this every week. They're shocked by what the process is. It is not a natural process. They're sleep deprived. I get it. Che offered insight into what a typical week is like from the host perspective. On Monday, they're meeting all these people and getting shown around. Tuesday, they get pitched ideas. Everybody's telling you what they're actually working on. Then you go to dinner with a couple of cast members and Lorne Michaels. On Wednesday, the cast does a table read. It's like a seven or eight hour day, just reading like 40 sketches, some bad ones, some great ones, whatever. That's when they decide what makes it onto the show. On Thursday, there are rewrites and rehearsal. Pre-taped sketches happen on Friday during the day and the night, and it goes very late.

1:28 And on show day, there's a run-through rehearsal before the dress rehearsal and finally a live show, Che said. So the blitzkrieg of that week, you're going to be frantic. I always say it feels like we're planning someone else's wedding every time because this is a very special day for them, but we're coming back. For them, this is their moment. This means everything. You're trying to make it as special as possible for them and as comfortable... They're not bad people. They want this to work. I understand the stress of that. It's why I don't come to crap on people when they're not good. I'm paraphrasing there. Drewski is your host tonight. Jimmy Carr was on Joe Rogan promoting his book on jokes. This was interesting. Carr said comedy has a natural rhythm of about 92 beats a minute. That's a comfortable walking place with a laugh word about every two and a half seconds, and the job is to get the crowd locked into it. I found this really interesting, and Carr was talking about Hedberg and even said that Hedberg's rhythm was very atypical and that a hack, if they keep the 92 beats a minute thing, can get laughs, whereas Hedberg would have variable speeds and they got candid about the stuff that Hedberg was into on the side, how that affected Mitch's performance.

2:32 Jimmy Carr said, pound for pound, Mitch Hedberg was the best joke writer of the last 30 years, but his pacing was inconsistent, which is worse than being consistently fast or slow. So Hedberg killed half the time and died half the time, and a hack with great rhythm would beat him almost every night. Jimmy Carr wishes somebody had pulled Mitch Hedberg aside and told him to keep the same cadence. Wow. Nikki Glaser was doing some press for her current tour. She said, I was so fearless when I started out, I would just say anything. And I'm glad I'm not that way anymore because I think there's some harm in that. I would just be trying to make jokes and I didn't care who it hurt because I was just trying to get to the punchline. I've had to be more thoughtful about the jokes I do now to get away with saying the things I want to say. So what you're saying is you did the Tom Brady roast and then made it to another level of showbiz and now you're dialing it back. Is that what you're saying? Because that's what I'm reading here. Nikki Glaser said, I think my friends would describe me as maybe one of the least confident people they know, just personally, how I feel about myself. But when I'm on stage...

3:24 It tricks me and my friends and my family into being like, whoa, that girl's so confident. It's not an act. It just comes naturally. It's harder and harder. The more attention you get to say fearless things, when you get bigger, that's when you need to pull it back a little bit because now you're for the masses and they can burn that witch. I do have a fear of coming off as unlikable. I think that's my whole pursuit in comedy, to feel liked and to feel like I'm a good person. Sometimes there's definitely a dark side of me that's probably not a good person and has bad thoughts like we all do, and I'm scared sometimes to reveal that. That's always the most interesting material. The best feeling in comedy... is when you're saying something that you're like, there's no way I could say that, and then you find a way to finally, with a crowd, make it work, where they're all laughing at something that's so inappropriate. That's the greatest feeling in the world, and that's what I'm always trying to achieve. Jerry Seinfeld mentioned his favorite four episodes of the sitcom Seinfeld, which starred Jerry Seinfeld as Jerry Seinfeld.

4:14 Jerry said, okay, my four, not in chronological order, and I actually gave this a little thought. His top four are The Contest, The Soup Nazi, The Merv Griffin Show and The Marine Biologist. Pretty good list, Jerry said. The contest doesn't require an explanation. The Soup Nazi doesn't either. Just the idea of the word Nazi in an episode. It's a Jewish show. It's just such a great, fun thing to do. The Marine Biologist, that was the best story tie-in finish to an episode we ever did. Jason's speech at the end makes that. And The Merv Griffin Show, because Kramer finds the Merv Griffin set in a dumpster and sets it up in his apartment. So just based on that one sentence, enough said. Missing the top four, Jerry said, I kind of went back and forth because I really liked The Boyfriend. That's the one with Keith Hernandez.

4:57 Fans were upset. One fan said Festivus. Another said Jerry doesn't know funny, sadly. So you're saying Jerry Seinfeld doesn't know funny, and Jerry Seinfeld doesn't know which episodes of Seinfeld were funny. Is that your premise, internet commenter? Jerry doesn't know funny, sadly. The comeback is by far the greatest episode ever. Merv Griffin was funny, but his other four were weak. See, now I think the Merv was the worst of the ones on Jerry's list. It's all subjective, folks. Bert Kreischer was on Fox News Digital. He was talking about food and laughter and stuff. And here is Bert Kreischer to save my voice. I think it's how most people relate to family. I think that is, you know, I think comedy, food, and I would argue booze are how most families connect. It's the ingredients to making sure it lubricates a great family moment.

5:49 And I think that people identify with it and it relaxes them and Having someone cook for you, and that's what I do when something's burning. Having someone cook for you is kind of enjoyable. It loosens you up. I mean, I know for a fact that out of all the podcasts I do, something's burning gets the best conversation going. And I think it's because I'm cooking for them. And they see that I'm occupied. And they know that they feel free to talk and that I'm listening. And then we have a few cocktails. And that's the interviews that have been the most... Revealing and the funnest for me. I will say this um Growing up we had a family dinner Once a week probably maybe twice a week it would be when my uncles would come over and my dad would sit at the head of the table my mom would cook or we'd and I And those dinners are the ones I remember the most. I think most people, probably, especially with a big family or in a family, they're hustling and they're trying to get everyone's doing homework and this and that. And we still, to this day, my daughters are 22 and 20. We all, we had dinner. They were home for a month and we had dinner every night. My wife was like, girls, what are we doing for dinner? What are we doing for dinner? And every night Leanne would say, Georgia favorite part of the day. And, and I think, If you're a family and you're hearing this or reading this or seeing this and you're not doing it, just it should remind you that that is what family is about.

7:18 Hugh Hefner's widow, Crystal Harris, name dropped a comedian. She claimed was a frequent visitor at the Playboy Mansion. Harris on a podcast said, John Lovitz, you were Playboy Mansion's number one customer. You were like one of the biggest pervs there. She said Lovitz was up there all the time and his eyes would go front to back. All the women that walked through the door and at the parties, he'd be the lurker. And I remember him every time, every party. John Lovitz reacted to this. He told Page Six, anytime someone tells me I'm number one, it's a compliment. I love it. He said Hugh Hefner was one of the nicest, most generous people I've ever met. And all his friends know it. That's all I have to say about that. Vulture has their list of comedians you should know and will know, and Ron Taylor is one of them.

8:00 You know him from the Kevin Hart Netflix Funny AF show. After earning a little money from stand-up in Detroit in the early 2010s, Taylor bought a van, drove to L.A., and spent the next several years living in that van, working odd jobs, and writing stand-up material. He worked as a doorman at the Comedy Store. I almost said the store as if I hung out there. At the Comedy Store. And filmed videos where he invited his friends over for van-cooked meals. Love to know what those are. And in the process, developed what became his signature style of cheerful, vintage suaveness. That's laconic, but not withholding. Good sentence there. In 2018, Taylor was voted a Just for Laughs new face. In 2024, he released his special on Veeps called Avalanche. Two quick questions with Ron Taylor. Question number one. What non-comedy skill do you possess that you're most proud of?

8:45 Ron said, I don't know how to call it a skill, but I do like to cook. I like building stuff in high school and had planned to do it in college, but all the math made my head hurt. Since then, I went to theater arts to do stand-up. The desire to build things was still there, though. I scratched that itch with cooking and making food. When you build something, you know you did it right. When it works properly in cooking, you know you did it right. Would it taste good? Question number two. If you taught a comedy class, what's the most crucial lesson you'd want your students to learn? Ron said, I'd want students to understand timing. Timing is one of the biggest things to me in comedy. Everybody wants to be fast, but most times the big laughs come from coming in at the right time as opposed to coming in quickly. A lot of us comics go too fast and step on laughs or rush to get in a line. Not wanting to miss the moment, if you wait and pay attention, the moment will come back and you can set up the moment again for an even better moment. You can get in 30 minutes of laughs with 15 minutes of jokes. And that is your comedy news for today. I need a drink. My voice is shot. See you tomorrow.