For most of its 27 years, 'Saturday Night Live' has been comedy'spremiere boys' only club. But not anymore.
By Susannah Meadows

So this woman walks into a room. It’s Ana Gasteyer, six-year veteran of “Saturday
Night Live”; the room is Studio 8H in Rockefeller Center, with its familiar set
whose chain-link fence makes it look like a ghettoized “Sesame Street.” This is
Friday afternoon rehearsal and Gasteyer takes her seat next to Rachel Dratch to
run through their recurring spoof of National Public Radio. The burly union guys
who are busy adjusting the lights don’t bother to look up when Gasteyer and
Dratch start to morph into the awkward, lonely hosts of “Delicious Dish.” The
women, lips pressed to their big tabletop microphones, move only their eyes to
get a look of their dashing Irish guest, played by Sir Ian McKellen. Their uninflected
speech betrays their repression. This charisma-free duo has never used an
exclamation point. Then Gasteyer (as the matronly Margaret Jo) says, “Is it me or
does that boiling cabbage smell like lovemaking?” And the workers lose it.

In its 27 years, “Saturday Night Live” has always been an uneven show; fans discuss its ups and downs as if it were the stock market. But for the past three years, the ratings have been steadily rising, and they’re still holding strong this season. And much of the credit should go to the show’s consistently funny women: not just Gasteyer and Dratch, but “Weekend Update” anchor Tina Fey (also “SNL’s” first female head writer) and two newer additions, Maya Rudolph and Amy Poehler. These five happen to be the most female players “SNL” has ever had, though they’re still outnumbered by the men. Moreover, this season features the show’s first on-air pregnancy: Gasteyer is due in three months and has plans to work through the remainder of the season. “I was sick from Gwyneth Paltrow through Ellen DeGeneres,” she says. All this makes for a strikingly feminized “SNL.” “All of the women are incredibly strong,” says former cast member Janeane Garofalo. “It’s talent, and it happens to be in female form.”

Back in 1975, the show’s first season, “SNL” was an equal-opportunity employer, with its original cast built on three women (Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman and Gilda Radner) and three men (John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd and Garrett Morris. Chevy Chase was promoted from writer to “Update” anchor at the last minute). But by 1993, the ratio had changed: just three women to eight men. Halfway through the 94’-95’ season, Garofalo quit over what she called “the predominately unenlightened” writing staff. “They made ignorant statements like ‘I don’t write for women’.” Garofalo doesn’t blame men, though. “You can find assholes in any kind of gender. I think it just so happened that these assholes were guys.”

Women’s problems at “SNL” reflect our long tradition of a predominately male world of comedy. It’s not just that fewer women than men try to be comics; it seems that there’s been an active bias against them. Even into the ‘90s, improv-sketch troupes such as Chicago’s Second City—a favorite “SNL” recruiting ground—refused to put more than two women on a six-person improv team. “SNL” is still surprisingly traditional when it comes to gender roles. Except for Will Ferrell as Janet Reno, the player of the same sex usually wins the right of impersonation. Executive producer Lorne Michaels carefully controls the number of men and women. His explanation for having so many women this year is simply that he decided to promote Fey from writer to on-screen “Weekend Update” anchorwoman after he already had his “full complement” of female performers.

So does this mean “Saturday Night Live” actually has a quota system? Perish the thought. “Because we do so much parody,” Michaels says, “you need somebody who can play the president. We reflect society. I’ve got all the newspapers here—let me look. Bono and President Bush on the front page of the Post … Cardinal Egan …an Israeli girl with a gun … Arthur Andersen …” His point is that men still dominate the news, leaving fewer good parts for women. “On any given week someone out there is unhappy,” he says. “When I say out there, I mean outside of my office. I remain in a state of bliss.”

Does the disproportion of male performers and writers on “SNL”—the writing staff currently has 19 men and three women—make a difference in the nature of the comedy itself? Tina Fey thinks so. “Women tend toward more character-based subtle observations,” she says. “Men are more amused by fighting bears, sharks and robots.” Several of the women say they would like to see more diversity on the writing staff—and so does Michaels, although he notes, “It’s rare to find talented people, period.” But this crop of “SNL” women gets around the issue by simply writing material for itself. “That’s the only way you can gain empowerment,” says Dratch. And having Fey, in her head-writer capacity, helping Michaels decide which sketches get on air,
certainly doesn’t hurt.

Most of these women have been friends for a long time—Dratch, Poehler and Fey met at Second City in
Chicago almost 10 years ago. They tend to look out for each other, write each other into scenes and leave their doors open. “If I’m having trouble coming up with stuff,” Dratch says, “I’m not going to go into Dudely Dude’s office.” One Dratch invention is her recurring sketch “The Lovers,” with Ferrell, in which she (s Prof. Virginia Klarvin) describes in a pretentious poetical voice the warmth of her lover’s “loinspace.” Dratch, who’s always resisted being limited to women’s roles, has also cooked up Sheldon, the wee-bit gross cohost of Wakefield Middle School’s morning announcements. Gasteyer, whose litany of creations includes an ice-cold Martha Stewart, will keep playing her recurring characters even now that she’s pregnant. “Those ladies are all poochy, you know? I told Tina, who writes [Martha] with me, ‘Well at least she has some weight gain recently.’ Poor thing.” Rudolph, for her part, developed her Donatella Versace impersonation with Emily Spivey, a writer on the show. Rudolph’s Versace regularly goes cross-eyed in her Jacuzzi, ordering her male slaves around. “It bores me to tears to show up in a short skirt and say some lines probably some guy wrote because you’re his fantasy,” she says.

Not that these women aren’t fantasies for some people. Internet news groups swarm with kids who obsess about every square inch of the women’s bodies. “Re: Rachel’s Knockers,” reads one subject line. “Some serious headlights there, and they look real too :).” To the women of “Saturday Night Live,” it can feel a little …inappropriate. “There’s nothing grosser to me,” says Poehler. “I mean, ‘I’d fuck Maya but I don’t know if I’d fuck Amy. No wait, I’d fuck Amy first, then …” It’s a good thing these women have a sense of humor. Despite all the progress they’ve made, the laughs must come in handy.