-Our next guest is an Emmy Award-winning
writer and actress you know
from her work on "Saturday Night Live"
and shows such as "A.P. Bio" and "Mapleworth Murders."
She stars in "Girls5eva,"
which is currently streaming on Peacock,
with new episodes released on Thursdays.
Let's take a look.
Welcome, Girls5eva.
How you feeling today, ladies?
-Blessed. -Great.
-Amusing.
-God-like.
[ Laughter ]
God-like.
-Okay. Now, I hear you are
about to go back into the studio to record your first album
since 2K01. Now, is that accurate?
-Absolutely, Nathan.
We start next week, and we're just
super excited to -- -I love New York.
[ Laughter ] I like to eat burgers
and look at the skyline.
-Yes! And we're hungry to get back at it.
Right, ladies?
-Absolutely. -Yum, yum, chomp, chomp.
[ Laughter ] -Please welcome back to the show
the wonderful Paula Pell!
[ Cheering and applause ]
♪♪
[ Cheering and applause ]
-Ah! -Hello, Paula!
-Ah!
The orgasm of a live audience.
[ Cheering ] -[ Laughs ]
So this is -- -Ah!
-Congratulations.
[ Laughter ]
-You know that my parents
say that, when they were in high school,
that, if a girl was a little, you know, fast,
they called them roundheels...
-Yeah. -...'cause they went back easy.
Yeah.
We just talked about roundheels. -You did?
-And a lot of the younger generation
had not heard the term.
-Yeah, roundheel. -And then they go,
"Why is it roundheel?", and then you explain it,
and they go, "Oh, yeah. Oh." [ Laughter ]
I was a very flat heel. [ Laughter ]
I was -- I was a flatfooted lady that just standed there
and held people's purses while they had sex with others.
-They called you gluefoot. -Yeah, a gluefoot.
[ Laughter ] -Hi, Seth!
-Hi! So, this is fantastic.
The second season, so much fun.
Just so we explain, in that scene we watched,
you -- your character had recently had knee surgery
and was on some Percocet.
-Yes, I was very, very,
very hammered on Percocet in that scene.
That's not my normal character,
but it's a little Liam Gallagher-esque.
And I decide to try to power through
and not get a knee replacement at the beginning of the season,
which actually mirrors that I had one of my
knee replacements collapse last summer before we shot.
And I was in a panic, and I found out
that they were going to have to completely redo it.
So they wrote it in the show, and they basically said, "Paula,
this is the most on-character thing
for this lesbian dentist that I play
that I have a knee replacement."
So it was the kind of sexy storyline
that goes with my character.
You did some very subtle face acting,
and I know this is a thing that you have perfected
over the years, and I would love to show it
to maybe some of the younger thespians.
-Yeah. You know, my best friend, James Anderson, who, you know,
has written every funny thing you've ever seen
on "Saturday Night Live,"
he and I used to, in college, do a journey
where we would go from one thing to another,
but we had to take our time.
We had to really take our time with our facial journey.
-Can I -- So why don't you go over there, camera one,
and I'm gonna give you two emotions,
and you take the journey for us. Okay?
-Okay. -Nauseous to horny.
-Okay. [ Laughter ]
This is nauseous to horny.
[ Laughter ]
[ Laughter and applause ] -Really nice.
[ Laughter, cheers, applause ]
Really nice, really nice.
Do one more for us? -Sure.
-Let's do, um... Give me a little
disappointed to furious. -To furious? Okay.
-[ Restrained chuckle ]
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Now...
You know, I'm really --
These new -- the new knees seem to be
doing great. -They're doing good.
This is a good commercial for my doctor.
-Yeah. -But it's just,
I have such long legs. Look how long they are.
[ Laughter ]
So your arm is a hand longer than your leg.
[ Laughter ]
So you -- but you have to do
a lot of 2005 girl-group choreography in the show.
-Yes. -Your knees held up for that?
-Yes, we are laughing a lot when we shoot these scenes
because I am a theater nerd,
and I did a lot of like, you know...
♪ Oklahoma ♪ like really corny --
corny-ass, good musical theater dance.
And I've never done any -- big surprise --
I've never done any hip-hop dancing.
[ Laughter ] And so when we're in the show
and we're shooting some of these scenes
where we have to really do some hip-hop dancing,
there will be a time after I've really learned it
where I say to myself, "Am I killing this?"
[ Laughter ]
"Am I kind of a sexy, older, gray fox
that's really killing this?"
And then I watch it back in the actual show,
and I look like I just got a colonoscopy
and I'm still working off the drugs,
and I'm looking for my purse. I'm kind of like...
[ Laughter ]
Like, I think in my head, I'm just like really nailing it,
and then I look, and I'm just kind of wandering and looking.
And they cut away from me a lot. They cut to all the other girls
because they're -- they're fantastic.
Your wonderful wife, Janine -- -Janine.
-I was backstage. I got to see her.
And you guys were driving recently.
And you -- this is a wonderful thing about a relationship.
You notice things that you're surprised you missed early on.
-Yes. -You notice the things she does.
-Janine is very, very, very nice,
a very great, hilarious and comedically brilliant person.
But she also has a surprising amount of road rage
that simmers just under the surface.
And it -- it never comes out.
She's not, like, someone to get out of a car or anything,
but she will -- she will do a lot of, like, front-seat,
passenger-seat driving with me, if I'm driving.
Then I get nervous, and then I don't feel like
I'm driving well.
And so I finally put the hammer down
'cause she does a lot of these.
She'll do this or this or that. I'm like, "How about this way?"
[ Laughter ] But...
I don't know if you can blur that out.
[ Laughter ]
But so she -- she does do a lot of that,
and she gets very frustrated and sarcastic to drivers.
So the minute she gets in the seat to drive, she's like,
"Fantastic. Oh, you're not gonna go left.
Oh, you're not. You're just gonna hover there.
That's great." And I have this stomachache.
So I said, "I'm driving to the city,
and I don't want you --" I've put the hammer down.
"Don't tell me what to do when I'm driving.
I will keep you safe. You're not allowed to do that.
It makes me a worse driver 'cause I'm nervous."
So we start driving the other day,
and we're getting close to the exit,
and this is a drive I've taken for years.
I used to commute to "SNL" from like up in the Hudson Valley.
And I know it, like, in my bones where to turn.
And she starts singing this little, like,
character song
that's passive-aggressively telling me where the hell to go.
So she's like...
♪ We're going on the Palisades Parkway ♪
♪ This is when we would turn right ♪
[ Laughter ]
♪ Let's take a little right right here ♪
And I was like, "Are you doing a character
to try to passive-aggressively boss my ass around on the road?"
-That's a very charming way to do it.
I got to give her credit for that.
I have a lot more questions for you.
We'll be right back with more from Paula Pell!