-Our next guest is a talented actor and comedian
you know from his work on "Saturday Night Live"
and "30 Rock" and animated shows
such as "Archer" and "Rick and Morty."
He stars in "Senior Year", which is streaming now on Netflix.
Let's take a look.
-You want a beer?
-Oh, uh...sure.
-Bah! Wrong answer, hot rod.
You think I'm gonna let you drink and drive
with my daughter?
-Oh, well, I'm actually not driving.
We're taking a Lyft.
-Oh, cool.
Though I suspect Stephanie would prefer not to spend her prom
evening with a drunken fool.
-Well, it'll just be the --
Uh, no, I think I'm okay, actually.
Maybe have a water if anything.
-Did you bring some condoms? -[ Gulps ]
Um, no.
-Hmm. Didn't think we need to have this talk.
But, uh, Seth, you are aware that unprotected sex
can lead to geriatric pregnancies?
-Stephanie -- -You ready to be an old dad?
-I'm sorry. Do you want me to sleep with your daughter or --
-What did you just ask me?
-Please welcome to the show our good friend
Chris Parnell, everybody!
♪♪ [ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
Welcome. It's so wonderful to have you here.
-Thank you. It's wonderful to be here.
-Yeah, back at 30 Rock, where we first met.
This is a fantastic film with Rebel Wilson.
She plays a woman who's come out of a 20-year coma
and is now going through her senior year.
-Yes, she's determined to go back
and finish out her senior year.
-And you play her father.
And had you ever worked with Rebel before?
She's sort of a force of nature.
-I hadn't, but she is.
But she's also just like a cool, normal, real person, you know?
But she's so funny. I mean, some of the stuff --
When we were shooting, there's a scene where I take
her phone away, and she fights it very vehemently.
And when we were shooting it, I thought to myself, "That was
probably a little over the top." I just kept it to myself.
[ Laughter ]
I was like, "Eh, that's too much, that's too much.
Take it down a notch."
But then when I saw it, I was like, "Oh, no, she was right.
That's brilliant." -She knows what she's doing.
-It's hilarious. Yeah.
-You actually taught high school
for a year after -- after college you went back?
-Mm-hmm. Yeah.
-I'm assuming you taught theater.
-I did. I taught at my old high school, Germantown High School.
Taught introduction to theater
and introduction to film and video.
-Gotcha. -Classes I had taken.
And yeah, I mean, I loved working with all the kids who
were involved with the theater department and the TV studio
because that's what I did, and those are the really
dedicated students.
I wasn't so cut out for the day-to-day teaching.
-Okay. -Yeah.
-Does that mean there were kids in your class --
some of your classes, who maybe weren't as invested in it?
-Exactly. -Yeah.
-Yeah, it was like there would be a group of students who are
very dedicated just 'cause they wanted good grades
or whatever -- they were serious students.
Then there's the sort of the bulk of them that were like,
"Oh, okay, I'll kinda try." And then there are a few that
are just, like, determined to make my life hell, you know?
[ Laughter ] -And do you think --
'Cause that's a young age to be a teacher.
I would assume you were kind of like blood in the water.
They knew they had something. -It's true, very much.
And I floundered.
Much like now, I have no idea how to maintain discipline
with my own kids. I certainly didn't then.
[ Laughter ] -And then you --
Sort of your path to your comedy career was to L.A.
and then you did the Groundlings,
a very famous comedy theater in L.A.
And you actually were roommates with a pre-"SNL" Kristen Wiig?
-That's right, yeah.
-How did you guys end up as roommates?
-Her roommate at the time, Holly Mandel, was coming to
New York for a bit, and I was going to L.A. for a bit,
so Holly stayed in my place and I stayed in her bedroom.
-And how quickly did you -- Could you have any sense of
those days of like, "Oh, my God, Kristen Wiig is something else"?
-Well, I mean, she was pretty funny.
-Yeah. -She was pretty fun.
It was completely platonic.
But, yeah, it was just a fun --
it was a fun few months or whatever.
I remember taking pictures of each other
under the kitchen cabinets, like hiding in there.
[ Laughter ]
-That's a very -- I will say that's a very --
For anybody knows Kristen Wiig,
that's a very Kristen Wiig thing, that she would get
an idea of like, "Here's we're gonna do tonight.
We're gonna take pictures that make it look like
we're in the kitchen cabinets." -Right.
-And it would be like an eight-hour bit, yeah.
-But we really were in the kitchen cabinets.
-Oh, there you go. Yeah, you guys never cheated it.
That was the thing about you guys. -No, that was it.
-You had a nickname at "SNL" I remember hearing
when I showed up, which was "Ice Man,"
which both referred to the fact that you would execute a script
sort of word perfectly, no flubs, but also you never --
You famously never broken sketches, including maybe
what is the hardest to believe of all time --
You were in "Cowbell" and were the only member of "Cowbell"
who kept it together.
[ Laughter ] -Yeah.
-I mean, that's really, like, that's the gold standard of
not breaking because I think, when you go back and watch it,
it seems like Will's sole purpose in that sketch
was to make his castmates break. -I think it was.
I think it was. Yeah.
Christopher Walken and I did not break.
-That's right. -Although there was a moment
that the camera was not on me, and I knew it wasn't on me,
and I looked down at my guitar, and I smiled.
So I don't know if that counts as a break.
-That, like, speaks to your nobility as a performer that
you want to let us know like, "I wasn't perfect off-camera."
-I wasn't. [ Laughter ]
I'm not really the Ice Man. -It's weird.
It never even occurred to me that Christopher Walken
also didn't break 'cause just the idea of Christopher Walken
breaking is, like, so crazy to me.
-It's impossible. -Yeah.
'Cause I, in my head, he just --
That whole sketch is that character.
He's never a guy who's, like, judging whether or not
this is a funny sketch. -No, he's right there.
He's in it. He is that guy.
-You've been doing a lot of V.O. work as well.
"Archer." Another season of "Archer"?
-We're waiting to hear, you know. We got season 13
that I don't know if that's about to come out.
I kind of lose track. -And "Rick and Morty" as well.
-"Rick and Morty." [ Audience cheers ]
-There we go. It must be wonderful,
for both those shows, when the scripts come in,
because they do -- certainly from watching them,
it seems like an incredible amount of care and love
goes into those scripts. -Oh, yeah, yeah.
They're very dense.
You know, even though the show doesn't last that long,
you know, it's like a lot of material in there,
and there are a lot of jokes.
And, yeah, they're delightful to read.
-Like, I mean, I have always thought
you have a million-dollar voice.
Have you finally moved to the position
that you have a great voice-over voice?
-Well, you know what the thing is?
A lot of voice-overs now, they don't necessarily want
a voice-over voice guy, you know, unless you're doing promos
or something like that, so a lot of the commercial work
is about just sounding like a normal guy, whatever that is.
[ Laughter ]
-Coming out of you, it doesn't look normal at all.
Yeah. [ Laughter ]
You know, we did some sketch work together, not a lot, but we
were in "Appalachian Emergency Room" written by Paula Pell.
[ Laughter ]
You played a character named Tyler.
-That's right. -And Tyler often was in
the Appalachian emergency room for a pretty specific reason.
-Yeah. He got a lot of things stuck up
in his rear behind area. [ Laughter ]
-And often kind of went out of his way to explain
how it had been a total accident.
-It was a very elaborate explanation.
-Yeah. But not particularly easy to believe, but elaborate.
-Never. -We talk about Second Chance
Theatre here with my old "SNL" castmates, something they did
that maybe fell a little flat in front of the audience.
-Right. -Of your work, what would you
propose to get the Second Chance Theatre treatment?
-Oh, my goodness, wow.
There definitely were some "SNL" sketches that I think I could
have bumped up a little better.
There was one I did for Andrew Steele.
Andrew Steele wrote it. -Yep.
-And it was Steve Baxter, Hollywood gynecologist.
[ Laughter ]
And Bill Murray was the host. He was the gynecologist.
And I was, like, a jazzy lounge singer guy singing about him.
And there's one moment in it
where it was just kind of a musical break.
And I wanted to do this thing, like, I'd be like, "Ooh-ooh-ah,"
a guy really feeling the music and all that.
And Lorne, between dress and air, told me,
"Don't do that thing with your head."
[ Laughter ]
And I remember being tormented by it.
I was talking to Tina Fey.
I was like, "But that's my best moment in it."
And so I ended up doing it.
[ Laughter ]
And I think it was a mistake.
[ Laughter ]
-Well, you know what?
It's nice that you can look back and have that judgment.
Yeah, yeah.
Every now and then, we make the wrong call in the moment.
-You got to listen to Lorne. -You got to listen to Lorne.
Hey, congratulations on the film.
Thanks so much for being here. It's always so great to see you.
-Thanks for having me. -Chris Parnell, everybody.
"Senior Year" is currently streaming on Netflix.
We'll be right back with Kwame Onwuachi.