-I have a few more questions
about your work in the boy-band/girl-band genre.
But when you first came to New York,
where did you come straight from?
Were you working in Florida at the time?
-I came from Universal Studios.
I had worked at Disney performing,
and then I was performing at Universal Studios
at the "Murder, She Wrote" post-production show.
-Wow.
-And I played an editor or an ADR person
and different people that put together
the episode of "Murder, She Wrote."
And, so, I did that and got a call
to come to interview at "SNL"
from the green room of Universal Studios Theme Park.
-I'm always fascinated with people's first
New York City apartments. What was your --
What did you find for yourself as a young writer?
-I kind of took the first one I saw
'cause I thought it was cute,
but the guy who was my real-estate guy was sweating.
It was winter, I think. It was late fall.
And he was sweating, and he was super intense,
and he kept using the word "sick" as positive,
which I did not know.
I was not savvy to the word "sick."
So he would just show me things and go,
"The kitchen at this place is sick!"
And I thought it was bad, and I was like,
"Why is he so excited about showing me
this terrible kitchen?"
And then he described this apartment, which, you know,
was soon after I realized that all of real-estate
New York descriptions are bull crap.
And, so, he would say, you know, "It has a prewar kitchen.
Vintage prewar kitchen with copper detailing."
And I would picture this, like, you know, weird tiling
that was all from the 1800s of copper.
And it was like a '90s gay man's kitchen
that was teal,
and it had copper, like, smears of paint
that looked like a total '80s video.
And, then, it would say, like, "garden window."
And you would look out, and there was like, you know,
half a diaper and a pigeon
and then, like, one plant that was half-dead.
So that was my first place I lived.
And it was next to H&H Bagels, which really was --
I was like Pepé Le Pew going out every day
to the smell of hot bread.
And I still am.
-You wrote a sketch called "7 Degrees Celsius."
-Mm-hmm. -This was a boy band.
This is cast members. That's James Van Der Beek.
-That was "The Beek." -"The Beek."
And you also got to write for 'NSYNC.
-Yeah, you know, I did that as recurring characters,
those four --
You know, Parnell, Jimmy Fallon, Horatio, and Kattan.
They were -- I made a fake boy band.
They had really weird facial hair,
and Will was the manager
and could only be 300 feet from them due to a court case.
And they had tinted glasses, the whole shebang.
And I would write the songs and everything.
And then 'NSYNC was the music guest,
and I think someone suggested or I suggested, like,
they can be the guest boy band, fake boy band on there.
So I wrote the song called "Hold the Pickle,"
where they were fast-food guys
and they had McDonald's outfits on.
And they were saying like...
♪ Hold the pickle and do it up big ♪
And it was all about
being in love and holding the pickle and all of this,
and it was very sexual.
And they couldn't come and rehearse it
until the very last minute.
And these guys took a while to learn things.
-[ Laughs ] Wait. Wait. This crew?
You're telling me they weren't great with choreography?
-It was a little rough.
It was like teaching goats how to sing and dance at that point.
Jimmy and Parnell were -- They were all trying very hard.
But sometimes they'd kind of be scattered off,
and I'd have to keep getting them back.
But 'NSYNC comes in, and I hand them the, you know --
I say "Xeroxed" because I'm 96 years old.
And I handed them, you know, the copies of the thing.
And they immediately, like,
whispered to each other in a huddle.
And then they get out and do full four-part harmony,
just kick flips, like, full dance number to it.
Like, "Yeah, let's just do this."
And they do the whole thing. And I was just in complete awe.
But that was really my exposure
to the sort of boy-group/girl-group stuff
a lot, was when I was sort of parodying them.
I have such a vivid memory of coming home --
You know, on Sundays after "SNL,"
it's like you're really unpacking your feelings
of failure or success
and your two martinis at the after-party.
And I would just never leave the apartment --
that apartment with the sick -- the sick kitchen.
I would never leave. I would just order --
I'd wake up at 2:00, order carryout,
and just stay in that cocoon all day.
And I turned on "TRL," at the time that was still on,
and there were all these screaming girls
'cause it was 'NSYNC.
And I looked down -- They showed down out the window.
And it was all these girls.
And it was hours after the show ended at "SNL."
And they had a giant banner that said, "Hold the pickle."
So that means all those little girls sat and painted --
poster paint in the middle of the night --
and made their mom go get poster paint at Duane Reade.
And they made this -- And it was one of those first times
at that show that I realized how immediate everything was
where it was like, "Oh, this is really truly...
uh, live." [ Sighs ]
-Well, Paula, thank you.
-I realized I had no real big-bang finisher for that,
so I just thought I would connect with you as an audience
and just be human.
I'd be human and connect with you.
-"Girls5eva" is streaming now on Peacock.