-Our first guests tonight are two very funny comedians
and writers you know from their work
on "Saturday Night Live" and "30 Rock."
You also know Paula as one of the stars of "A.P. Bio,"
which returns on Peacock this September.
Their new show, "Mapleworth Murders,"
is currently streaming on Quibi with new episodes
released every Monday.
Let's take a look.
-Chief of police coming through.
Look at this goddamn fruit roll-up.
Mapleworth, everywhere you go, someone gets killed.
I'd never invite you to a party, especially a surprise party.
-I would.
Having one of my guests get murdered is worth having
Mrs. Mapleworth grace me with her dancing charismas.
-Pewntz, come on, man!
You're getting all worked up for nothing!
I need you to go to my car and get my crown seam gloves.
Not my fishing gloves,
not my miming gloves, not my falcon gloves.
They only sell those one at a time anyways. It's not two.
You've never seen a person with two falcon gloves, have you?
-Yeah, I -- -You've seen somebody standing
around in the park with two hands up like this?
-Yeah, maybe I misremembered.
-Here's my conversation with our good friends
Paula Pell and our very own John Lutz.
John and Paula, how are you guys?
-Hi. -Hello.
-It's so nice to see you both.
The three of us used to all work together
at "Saturday Night Live" as writers.
And now, Paula, I'm lucky enough to work with you on "A.P. Bio."
And, John, you're still a writer on "Late Night."
And yet this is your first time as a guest
on this show via Zoom.
-Yes, via Zoom.
The way I wanted to do it.
[ Laughter ]
-This will not impress any of your colleagues
on the writing staff. -No, not at all.
-Basically the last thing you did in the studio
was a very popular sketch of yours.
-Yes.
There's a thing called where you -- you're supposed to
look on your phone and look at the last normal photo
that happened before quarantine.
And my last photo is from something I did on the show,
and it is this.
It's Squattle.
-[ Laughs ] Yeah, there you go.
-Yeah. -[ Laughs ]
-It should be noted that your last normal photo
was already fairly abnormal.
-[ Laughs ] Yes, definitely.
-That is also my vaginal sonogram.
[ Laughter ]
-Now, Paula, you know, a lot of people have had sort of
shipping mishaps, mostly because, you know,
there's so many more packages being sent during quarantine.
And then also the mail is slowing down.
But before this started, you had a shipping mishap with Amazon.
-Yeah. We've been ordering everything on Amazon obviously.
And -- That was not sponsored.
But we've been ordering constantly, and I'm a little --
I'm always a little nervous because last --
right after we finished "Mapleworth,"
we finished shooting, and I was just thinking, you know,
I was going to buy myself a gift for Christmas.
And I realized that all my vibrators had kind of turned.
They sort of went bad, and they just turned.
They had deteriorated from lack of use.
So I ordered one on Amazon.
And I never got it.
And then I went home for Christmas,
and then I had a great Christmas,
and I came back from Florida to L.A.,
and I was sitting one day, and it said -- it didn't say
"your vibrator has arrived,"
but it said "your package has arrived."
And I looked, and it had arrived,
but it wasn't on my front stoop,
and I couldn't figure it out for like a whole day.
I was like, "Oh, I got to call them. They're wrong," you know.
And then I looked on my e-mail, and Amazon had sent me a photo
of the box, which was on my mother's front stoop in Florida.
-[ Laughs ]
-I had sent it to the wrong address
with a lot of poinsettias and, like, a little beagle
that says "welcome," you know.
And it's my artificial schlong in a box.
[ Laughter ]
-So what did you do?
-So I called my parents, and I was just, you know,
like 10 years old, like getting caught doing something bad.
And like, "Hey, just by the way, there was some stupid mishap.
There's something I ordered. It's just a stupid thing.
Just, you know, don't open it.
Just put it in another box
or put another label on it and just send it."
So about a week later, I got it,
and it was in a completely different box
and wrapped in Orlando Sentinel newspaper.
So clearly they had opened the whole thing up
and then lovingly wrapped it.
And my mom said something about a shaver.
I think she thought it was like a little -- a little --
-Oh, I see. Gotcha.
-But she's gonna know now!
-[ Laughs ]
This is also, I will say, the gift you rewarded yourself
with post-"Mapleworth" was thematic.
There are some vibrator-adjacent jokes in the show.
-Yes.
Abigail, my character, Abigail Mapleworth,
has a drawer full of "neck massagers."
-Right. -And she really sticks to
that theory that they are neck massagers
for mature women and all mature women have neck massagers
when they're stressed out.
-[ Laughs ]
Now, John, this is an idea you came up with,
and the minute I heard it -- -Not the vibrators.
Not the vibrators. -Not the vibrators part.
Paula was very kind to add her personal experience to the show.
-That's in my rider. That's on my rider of my contract.
[ Laughter ]
-How did you -- How did this idea occur to you, John?
-Well, I was trying to write something for me,
and I just had a bunch of writer's block.
And so my wife Sue, Sue Galloway, who you know,
said, "Why don't you just -- You should write something for Paula
because she's the funniest person we know."
And then I went off for like five minutes and came back
immediately with this idea because I thought of her,
just picturing Paula as like a Miss Marple
or a Jessica Fletcher character just fit perfectly,
and then pitched it to Paula, and it just all fell into place.
-It was one of those calls because sometimes you get a call
of like, "Hey, I was thinking what if this."
And you're like, "I'm gonna think about that."
And he called me with that, and I was like,
"When can we immediately do this?
Oh, my God."
And then we found a home at Quibi.
-And you did find a home at Quibi, and one of the things
you also found yourself doing was watching
old "Murder, She Wrotes."
And while they are not -- I mean, it's light drama.
Like, the show was never too scary or too dark,
but it's also very funny to go back
and watch those old episodes.
-Yeah. I love -- I love how -- one that John and I watched,
we got hysterically laughing was, you know,
everything at "SNL" is like boom, boom, boom,
and everything in television and everything has got to be,
you know, under time.
And we started watching this episode,
and she was in a nightclub with her niece
because she has 8,000 nieces in every town.
And she's ordering wine, and it was just this kind of
little bit of curious music, and she was looking at the menu
like, "Hmm, I think I'll have a white wine."
And then you're just like, "What is the clue?"
Like, what is this gonna connect to?
No connection whatsoever.
They were like, "Fill the front half of the show.
A couple special guests fell through.
We can't shoot at the Taj Mahal now, so we can't do the remote.
So just -- just fill it up."