[ Cheers and applause ]
-Welcome back to "Late Night." My thanks to Will Forte,
Michael Symon, Vanessa Bayer, Jason Sudeikis, and as always,
Fred Armisen and the 8G Band.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Carson Daly is up next.
But first, to conclude tonight's episode,
an in-depth discussion of this evening's sketch,
which we are calling "After Jennjamin."
[ Laughter ] For those of you at home,
feel free to go online to see the rest of this segment.
We expect it won't last longer than eight hours.
Vanessa Bayer had to leave because
a Hollywood producer saw her in tonight's sketch
and offered her a 100-picture movie deal.
So, Will, let's start. Do you feel satisfied,
having finally performed "Jennjamin Franklin"
for an audience?
[ Laughter ]
Did Herman Melville feel satisfied when he finally --
did "Moby Dick" for the first time?
They staged it many times. -[ Laughs ]
-Did Ernest Hemingway...
[ Light laughter ]
...get the same satisfaction...
from staging "The Sun Also Rises"?
Did Tom Clancy love "Hunt for Red October"?
I mean, it's a -- the question --
it's more a question in a question, you know?
-Yes.
-It's more about a life philosophy.
I mean, yeah, it was all right. It was good.
It was great. It was fine. -Right.
-It's more like,
how can how can we make ourselves better as people?
How can we learn from this situation tonight?
-Gotcha. -And, uh,
that's what I'm happy about.
I felt like we were teaching people.
-Gotcha.
-We weren't, like, showing a sketch.
We were teaching people. We were growing.
And, you know, this is a template for...
-What's next for any -- yeah.
-Thank you.
-Jason, you inhabited a role...
-That's -- yeah. -Yeah, let's give it up.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-...that so many -- -Thank you.
-...so many so many had grappled with
and had not quite wrestled to the ground.
Jonah Hill, Ashton Kutcher, Brian Williams.
What was your approach to this character?
-You know, I just sort of -- Will wrote a beautiful letter.
And we usually text.
But when when someone writes a letter now...
[ Laughter ] ...I don't know about --
I don't know about you. I don't want to speak for you.
But I freak out. I get scared first
and I assume the worst.
-Yeah, anthrax. -Anthrax. Exactly.
[ Laughter ]
-And -- but I read it.
It was very well written. It was incredibly concise.
It's like, "I'll see you here,
or I'll cut off your dick."
[ Laughter ]
-And... -That's great.
-And I...
And I didn't want to, you know,
say goodbye to my dick yet, so it was like...
[ Laughter ]
So here I was.
And I tried to not watch the other versions of it.
You know, I know -- and it was easy
because we don't -- we don't videotape table reads.
-Right.
-So there was nothing to watch anyway.
-Never been on film before, yeah.
-Never been filmed.
And it was just a matter of just diving in
and just saying the words written on the cue cards
and, you know, not fake laughing
in order to bring it home. -Yeah.
-Fred, you and Vanessa probably had
the hardest part in this sketch
because you played a couple who took quite a journey.
You had met Jennjamin. You seem pretty into her.
You were going to have a three-way with her,
but then you decided you wanted to meet your friend.
And then in the course of really only a few minutes,
you became repulsed by Jennjamin.
It was a roller coaster, really.
How do you approach that sort of scene?
-We saw ourselves as little tiny soldiers.
You know what I mean? Like, this is for Jennjamin.
So it was our duty, therefore, to leave.
We exited at the end. That was our job.
And we are just wheels for his truck.
-Now, Will, I can't help but notice that you still have
both lipstick and eye shadow on.
When -- what point of tonight will that come off?
-I don't think it comes off tonight.
[ Laughter ]
-I wait until time and the elements
strip it away gradually from me.
-That's great. -As a showering man,
it probably will be tomorrow at some point.
[ Laughter ] Uh...
-Um...
-That is -- A character doesn't disappear.
It erodes.
-Yeah, that's great.
Now, Jason, we -- you've been on the show.
We've talked about your own participation
in "Second Chance Theatre." -Yeah.
-"Juggling Lessons." Can we --
Can we get this? Can we do this?
-I mean, I think so. I think so.
Yeah. It's just a matter of getting all the props.
-Yeah. [ Laughter ]
-Which is pretty -- most of the stuff, you know,
Amazon Prime is really helpful. -Yeah.
We'll know where to find it, yeah, yeah.
-We'll find stuff. I mean, that'll be about it.
Yeah, but I would -- I think if the --
It's like, when you see this take off the way --
it's like the first hot air balloon ride.
Everybody is like, "Oh, this is gonna be a disaster."
-Right. -It's going to light on fire.
Everybody's going to die.
That basket is gonna go up like tissue paper.
-Mm-hmm. -And then it doesn't.
-Yeah, I think it did. I think the first one did.
-That first one did. The first one did.
The first one did, but the second one,
once they were kind of like,
"Hey, let's not make this basket out of tissue paper..."
[ Laughter ]
It's like that. I'm like, okay,
I want to be the second.
Technically the "third" one. -Right. Yeah.
I would be flattered. -And, Fred, do you have
any "Second Chancers" in your...
-Yeah. I think "Rooftop."
-Oh, yeah, "Rooftop." -Oh, wow, yeah.
-With -- Joe Kelly wrote...
-And with Jason. -Jason, yeah.
-"Rooftop." I had forgotten about "Rooftop,"
an all-time great. -Yeah.
-So we'll slot that as well.
We're going to open it up to our audience now,
if any of you have questions for "Jennjamin Franklin."
There's a woman on the aisle here.
We're going to bring you a microphone,
and if you could just stand for us.
-You do not get to keep the microphone.
-You do not. Thank you very much.
-I'm curious, Will, what was the inspiration
behind "Jennjamin Franklin"?
-What was the inspiration, Will?
[ Laughter ]
-I wanted to find a character
that looked like Benjamin Franklin...
[ Laughter ]
...but was a woman.
[ Laughter ] Uh...
And it went from there. I spent --
It's just like -- -Yeah, yeah...
-That's great. Anyone else?
-I honestly don't remember. I don't --
-Yes, second row over here.
Oh, sorry. First row, two seats in. Yes. Coming.
-Hi. I was just curious.
What is it specifically about the sketch
that made you want to keep bringing it back?
And like what -- what was your favorite part?
What? Like, yeah. -You saw the sketch.
[ Laughter ]
-But what was your favorite part?
What is the one specific thing?
-You know what? It's crazy.
There are some -- you'll --
you're working your butt off every week, and...
It's tough. You go through a table read,
something gets just no applause.
Something -- and you just move right on from it.
But every once in awhile, you'll just have something
you just get stuck on. It's really weird.
And it's -- there are probably things that were way better
than this that I just never thought twice about.
But for some reason, this little piece of crap stuck with me.
And I was like, just --
-You just couldn't flush it.
[ Laughter ]
It just kept finding its way back to the...
[ Applause ]
-Yes. This gentleman in the second row.
-Here we go. -All right.
When you found out it was actually going to happen
on live TV,
did you think it was a practical joke,
or did you just think, "Okay,
I actually have to make this good now?"
-It's...
[ Laughter and applause ]
Uh...
The joke is on everyone else pretty much.
The joke -- No, it was -- it was --
I was very excited because we've talked about it
so many times.
And I just thought, if it goes up and is a lot of fun
and works really well, great.
If it is horrible, great also.
It's like, just to get to --
It's so fun to even talk about it 'cause we're --
we're very close friends
and we just have the best time even talking about it.
Now we got to find something else to talk about.
-Yes.
-I don't know what we're going to do.
-I will say there's been multiple times
where, like, we were like, we'd do like a "MacGruber" panel.
We've talked about it in front of audiences before
about our disagreement.
And audiences at the end always just want to see it.
-Yeah. -Like there's --
So I'm so glad that we finally pulled it off.
And this was an idea -- "Second Chance Theatre"
was like one of the first ideas
I had when I knew I was doing this show.
I was like, oh, I want to do this right away.
And "Jennjamin" was sort of top on the list.
Let's see. Fifth row. This woman right in the center there.
Yes. There you are.
-Have you written a second segment?
And if you did, and it's a wedding,
have you chosen a wedding gown, and what style is it?
[ Laughter ]
-[ Speaks indistinctly ]
-That's a question I've answered before.
Uh...
I have not --
-Methinks she's a wedding designer.
Wedding dress designer. [ Laughter ]
-You know, something -- something frock-y, for sure.
-What color? -Uh, brown.
[ Laughter ] For sure.
-We do have to give it up
for the incredible wardrobe department.
-Oh, yeah.
-This is the "SNL" wardrobe department.
-Amazing. [ Applause ]
-And...
the great thing about any time you write a sketch like this
is they actually, of course,
look at, like, Benjamin Franklin photos.
They want to make it look as much like Benjamin --
-They're amazing. -Yeah.
-Just every department
is the top of their field.
It's -- you know, working at "Saturday Night Live"
was such an amazing experience
to get to work with all these incredibly gifted people.
And they were all, you know, doing --
helping tonight put this together, you know?
Just amazing --
-Everybody wanted to scratch this --
-Literally putting this bald cap on in, like,
lightning -- -Yeah.
-It's crazy. -It's great.
-What's great is having an opportunity
to see your dream come true.
[ Laughter and applause ]
-My sad little dream.
-Top row against the back. Yes.
[ Laughs ] -Thank you.
-Hi. My name's Hayden Smith, and I just wanted to know,
do you think that the kiss adequately represented
the true love story of Jennjamin Franklin?
-Do you know, we had not even written the kiss in --
We did right before,
but it was never a part of this thing, so...
-So it wasn't rehearsed really?
-It -- we did rehearse it once.
[ Laughter ]
I'm not joking. Uh...
And -- -But, yeah, that was decided
about 30 minutes before you saw it.
Like, what if we --
Yeah, we were like, "Ha! Wait, what?"
[ Laughter ]
"We've been sold."
It wasn't, "Should there be a kiss?"
It was, "What type of kiss?"
So we had to, like, really find that kiss through,
you know, trial and error, and...
-But to answer your question, I think it does
sort of symbolize, like, the relationship.
You know, it's one open mouth...
with another open mouth engulfing it.
[ Laughter ]
And --
-It's really a classic "Who wants it more?"
-Yeah. And also a classic
"Who can open their mouth wider?"
[ Laughter ]
-Yes. The second to last row right in the middle.
-Will, you did an amazing job portraying Jennjamin Franklin.
But do you have a dream actress or actor in mind
to play Jennjamin in a full-length film?
[ Laughter ]
-First of all, [bleep] you. Um...
[ Laughter and applause ]
Uh...
[ Laughter and applause ]
-Whoo!
-Um, uh...
[ Laughter ]
Sadly, Sorrell Booke, I believe, has passed out.
-Yeah.
-I think it'd have to be Eric Stoltz then.
[ Laughter ]
-Thank you all so much. -Thank you.
-I feel like that's where we should end this evening...
Thank you so much. -Thank you so much.
-...for staying with us for "After Benjamin."
Fred Armisen, Jason Sudeikis,
and of course, the one and only Jennjamin Franklin,
Will Forte.
Have a great night, everybody. Thanks for sticking around.