-Our first guest tonight is an Emmy-nominated actress
and comedian you know from "Saturday Night Live,"
which is back this weekend with host Keegan-Michael Key
and musical guest Olivia Rodrigo.
The third and final season of her show "Shrill"
is streaming now on Hulu.
Let's take a look.
-I was talking to my buddy Will, alright?
I have known him for a really long time,
since high school.
He works at the science museum.
He is perfect, and I realized
that you two are probably perfect for one another.
-Wow. You said we're perfect for each other, like, three times.
-That's perfect.
-Oh, my God.
Okay, well, then give him my number
and tell him to text my dumb ass.
-I will do that. -Ooh, God.
I'm juggling a lot of nasty boys.
-Please welcome back to the show our friend Aidy Bryant.
[ Applause ]
Hello! -Hi!
Oh, thank you, my friend.
Wow. -Hi, Aidy.
-Hi! -It's lovely to see you.
-Oh, it's nice to be in a room with you.
-You had quite a weekend.
-Yeah. -Friday, "Shrill" came out.
-Yep.
-Birthday? -Uh-huh.
-Happy birthday, Aidy. -Thank you.
-And then on Saturday, you had a live show.
-Yeah, I would say it was so much attention
that now I'm ruined and I'll never be the same.
-Yeah. -Yeah.
-Like, now, do you just feel
the lack of attention in these moments?
-Yeah, I'm devastated even right here.
I need more. Where the hell --
I'm, like, freaking out.
-You got to, which is very sweet --
your mom was on the show,
as were all the cast members' mothers.
That's the third time your mom's been on the show.
-She's an old pro, and she's being mean about it now.
-Oh, really? -Yeah.
-How does the meanness sort of show itself?
-You know, I mean, she's just like kind of
cruising around the studio like, "Excuse me."
And also, we had, like, a prop that was in it,
a dress that then was cut,
and they hadn't Eamon, our prop guy, know yet.
And so, like, he came to hand it to her.
And before I could be like, "Oh, it's cut."
She was like, "That's scratched."
Which I was like, "Scratched?"
That's not an industry term, ma'am.
I loved it, though. She was like, "That's scratched."
I was like, "Damn."
-I can't believe, by the way,
I was on that show for twelve and a half years,
and not one Mother's Day in the entire time I was there.
-Well, then what is happening to me?
-I think -- oh, yeah, 'cause once is awesome.
Is that what you're very secretly saying, is one time?
-I think once would have been nice.
Three is now like, "Well, here we go again."
-She's like, "I remember when I got my Taft-Hartley."
-I know. She's a full SAG member.
-Did you have any time
to celebrate your birthday on Friday?
I know it's very hard on the show.
-Not a moment. Devastating. -Yeah.
-No, no, I mean, you know, my mom was in town,
which was really nice, and, you know, we hung out a little bit.
But it's a worker's time, so it's fine.
-Congratulations on "Shrill." -Thanks.
-Three seasons. -Yeah.
-And this season, of course, the challenge that many shows
had this year of COVID protocols.
-Yeah. -Is this a dressing room?
What is this area here? -No.
This is a little box that we would go in between setups.
And I don't know that it made us safer,
but it certainly was a demented feeling.
-Yeah. -So like, between setups,
we would go in these little, like, shower curtain boxes.
-'Cause it seems like there's a lot of places
that the COVID could get in.
-I think the air could come in the top, the front,
the back, the side.
-And COVID famously uses the air as passage.
-That's what we're hearing.
But yeah, no, I mean, there were all kinds of different things.
Also, you know, like, normally we have stand-ins,
which we still did, but we also have, like,
intimate scenes on the show, you know?
And so they didn't want to have to make our stand-ins,
like, get on top of each other.
So they started using -- I think you have a picture of it.
-Yeah, so this is...
would you call this a hyper-realistic dummy?
-I would, and I think it's important to know
that's me.
-So this is --
I mean, of course, I had to be told it was a dummy,
because I assumed this was a photo of you on a bed.
-Yeah, of course. -What a good job they did.
-So that's for a sex scene. That represents me.
-And you, famously, during sex,
your arm gets quadruple-jointed.
-That's right, and my knees are together,
but my feet go out.
I make them work for it.
-The feet out let you know, like, "I'm interested,"
and then knees together.
-I'm open-minded.
Work your way up.
But I do think it's cool because then, you know,
sometimes they would have sort of the male stand-in
get on top and have, like, an intimate moment.
-This looks like the thumbnail of a bunch of Netflix shows.
Like, a Netflix documentary.
-I mean, can't you feel the intimacy?
-Yeah. -It's beautiful, I think.
-It's really beautiful. -My hair looks good.
-I also, like, for me, I find it's, um --
I like to have, in my intimate moments...
-Yeah.
-Just like, a weird, ghostly crew member near a ladder.
-Absolutely, but, you know, let me tell you this,
and this is good for the ladies at home.
I took this dummy home. I let my husband go to town.
I never have to do a thing.
-Do you think he knows it's a dummy or...?
-No idea. -No idea?
-I think he thinks I'm in pure ecstasy.
I'm frozen in love.
-Have you tried recording sort of sweet nothings
and put a cassette in the dummy's head
so that he hears your voice?
-Yeah, I'm definitely going to do a recording.
[ In Australian accent ] "Oh, yeah, babe.
That rocks, what you doing with your wiener."
-So that is an accent you use
in your normal, day-to-day lovemaking?
-I think, yeah. Kind of flirty. That's me being flirty.
-Your flirty is just a little British.
-And like, almost dipping her toe in Australia.
-You got to direct an episode of the show this year.
-Yeah. Well, kind of.
It was a weird -- there was a false positive
and so then it was like,
"Okay, I guess I can fill in for a couple of days.
-Oh, so they had to sort of shut down?
-They had to half shut down,
but some people were out of quarantine earlier,
and so I did, like, three days
of directing myself and our crew.
And it was very weird because,
you know, there used to be just like goofin' and toofin',
and so then I would, like, be doing a dumb scene
and be like, "Brr-brr-brr. Cut."
And then they would be like, "Oh, she's the director.
Cut, I guess."
-I read a story you told in the "Chicago Tribune" recently,
which was such a delight, because --
again, my favorite stories to hear of any performers
are the time they bombed the hardest,
and yours happened at Second City.
-Yeah, and, you know,
it was during this thing that they do called "buyouts,"
which basically means that, like,
the audience is completely bought out by one group,
and normally that's 200 people
and they're, like, there for a conference
and they go out after the conference to see Second City.
But this was, like, 30 people and they were --
I don't know exactly what their group name was,
but they were all police chiefs from various cities in Texas.
So it was like, an extremely weird sample of men.
And I performed, like, this little, quiet song
that was kind of what I based the sketch "Joan,"
that I did with Harry Styles,
where I sing a little song to my dog --
I based it on that, and it's like, I sing this sweet song
about a bird who's my boyfriend and I captured him,
And truly, in the middle of it,
one of the policemen stood up and said, "This is horrible!"
And he was just like, looking me right in the eyes.
And I was like, "Uh-huh. Yes, thank you."
And then just like kept going, in sheer terror.
-Those moments like, freeze.
Like, it's amazing how time slows down.
-I really genuinely was like,
"I've survived this and nothing can stop me."
-That's great.
-'Cause to look a man in the eye who hates you and continue
to be like, "Beep-bop-ba-dee-doo-dee,"
is the ultimate, like, "[Bleep] you, bitch."
-Well, we are all luckier for the fact
that you overcame that moment.
-Thank you.
-And it is such a delight to have you here,
and you're going to stick around.
We'll be right back with more from Aidy Bryant.