-Tonight's "Second Chance Theatre"
is a sketch that you guys worked on together called "Unicorn."
-That's right. Yeah, this was from the --
one of the last episodes of my first year writing for "SNL."
So 2010.
And it went to dress with an actress named Betty White.
-Yeah.
From the very beginning, this sketch was an uphill battle.
Betty was not fully on board.
Can you talk a little bit about the why?
-Yeah. So, I got just kind of blindsided by this.
I got called into her dressing room.
It had gone well on Wednesday, and I assumed she liked
that it was getting laughs and people were nice about it.
And I got called into her dressing room
on Friday or Saturday.
And her manager, who's much older than her...
[ Laughter ]
...started to lay into me and slapping the coffee table
saying, "We said no animals!"
-Right. -And I was just flabbergasted.
We didn't have an actual horse playing the unicorn even.
It was always a very fake stuffed animal.
So I was confused by that.
And then I tried to talk to them
about how the unicorns aren't actual animals.
And how there is kind of a fun in that Betty White is
the most unlikely of people to be this cold unicorn euthanizer.
-Yeah.
-And we just kind of lost -- and then our concession,
we realized this week when we looked back at the final dress
script was we put a paragraph at the end
where Betty says, "No unicorns were hurt."
And it's not a joke.
It's for other people out there who are maybe worried.
A bizarre jokeless moment in "SNL."
-Yeah. -Yep.
-And now there was, you know, I think all three of us
would agree "SNL" has the best staff in the world.
-Yep. -The best props, best wardrobe,
best hair and makeup, and when you first brought
this sketch to them, it wasn't necessarily going to just be
fake unicorns, right?
-Yeah, they offered to get a horse and put a horn on it.
-Which, now that, that to me
seems like some animal cruelty by default.
-That's a good point.
We probably should've let them know, like, Betty know
and her manager that, hey, we could have gone this route,
and we didn't because of you.
The only other option was I think Lorne's daughter
at that time had a real unicorn,
which I know we're not supposed to talk about.
-Right, I know, very much so.
I think Lorne showed us pictures and said --
[ Laughter ]
Now, it should be noted because I do want to take
some of this onus off Betty White.
You did try it one other time.
-Yeah, in my third season, we did it with Ferrell.
And it's more the version that we're doing for
"Second Chance Theatre" where it's a little bit more
about the back-and-forth between what was Jason and Ferrell.
-Will Ferrell, one of the all-time greatest sketch actors.
-Yes. -Yeah.
-Yeah, not that Colin Farrell wouldn't have crushed it,
totally capable. Um, but, yeah.
Yeah, giving it his all.
-And Will Ferrell liked it and tried really hard.
In my memories, it went medium then, or it maxes out at medium.
[ Laughter ]
-And now the other thing that's very -- so now we're admitting
right now we're about to show people a sketch that bombed with
Betty White and only did medium with Will Ferrell.
Is this the worst -- was Betty White "Unicorn" the worst
either of you ever bombed at dress?
-Ooh. -I have one worse.
And it was --
Mulaney and I wrote one where we'd read a true story
that Stephen Hawking
was seen going to a strip club in England.
-Yeah.
-And that the guy in the article was interviewed as saying,
"Yeah, every time he comes in, I always say,
'Stephen, do you want to talk about planets
or do you want to just look at the ladies?'"
And Stephen always says, "Just the ladies this time."
And so Mulaney and I wrote a sketch about
what an idiot that guy would be.
But as soon as Fred came out in a wheelchair and was, like,
talking in an electronic voice, the audience --
I mean, I think some crew guys walked out.
-Yeah. -Yep.
-And it should be noted this was not some ad homonym attack.
This was ripped from the headlines.
-Yep. -Yes.
-I should say it was ripped from a headline
that not a lot of people had seen.
So it definitely felt like you had made it up.
[ Laughter ]
-Which just seems like it's such a random weird thing
to say about him.
-There's a couple things we should note
and then we're going to come back and watch this thing.
One, obviously, it was meant to be a live sketch.
We shot it in three different locations.
Two, the children were always played by cast members.
So you had people like Nasim Pedrad and Abby Elliott
and Vanessa Bayer all playing children.
We did -- Sudeikis and I -- we used our kids.
And I think it adds to the verisimilitude
of a mythological beast sketch called "Unicorn."
So we're going to all watch it together,
and then we're going to come back and talk about it.
Everybody stick around for the first performance
on television of "Unicorn."