Punkie Johnson on Reveals What Working at SNL is Actually Like

That's the thing you have to do with SNL, right? You have to constantly be coming up ideas for sketches, huh? Yeah, a lot of people don't get how I think mentally frustrating And not frustrating mentally exhaust. Yeah, I get exhausted with SNL a lot now Ask me to write a pilot. I'll write you a pilot I'll have fun with it. But a sketch is a different world. It's a different world. It's a different ball game. It's not my world It's it's a you know SNL is a very hard job. Very hard job. It's not it's I mean, it's hard mentally It's hard physically. It's hard It man is hard and I don't know let me tell you something the perks are great I have a whole bunch of fun. I'm sure I have fun with those people in there. I have to have fun creating relationships I have fun. You're also a part of a group that includes Eddie Murphy, John Belushi, Gilda Rander, Dan Aykroyd Phil Hartman that feels good. Holy shit. I mean that that's a crazy legacy Chris Rock I walked through that building. I want to Donald like it's the palm trees every day. Yeah Every day wild every day. I'm like what the fuck are you doing here? Wild still in my third. How do you write do you write in front of a computer? Do you write you just sit around and Write things down when they come to you. What do you do? Well, it's a very fast right the turnover over there So it's like you do the show Saturday Sunday you can rest your mind if you want to but you got to have something cooking and boiling inside of your brain Sunday night So then Monday we go we pitch we meet the hosts and then we pitch ideas It's something what's a Sunday for you like sleep sleep sleep. No liquor I eat whatever I want and I sleep all day, but do you is that when you're like prepping you get ready for Monday? Sometimes it depends if I have the strength I'll call people and say hey, you know what you got this week I got this idea. Let's figure out how to flush it out tomorrow, which is a Monday. All right, so Mondays we go to work Just to meet the hosts and kind of just settle in we meet. Hello. How you doing? Like if it was you hey Lauren to say Joe Rogan everybody we're all going his office. His office is about this big Maybe a little smaller We all sit on the floor like preschoolers We've got our legs crossed and Lauren to say we're gonna start with you rose, but rose by the pitches her idea to you How you doing Joe? She'll say something you are a man that has a vision of Exotic coffee shops, so you open up a coffee shop that's Full of strippers and you call it tease search or some shit like just stoop just stupid. It could be a real idea It could be something fake. I always pitched something stupid Look, I remember we went to work on black history They I'm on Martin Luther King Day and my pitch was hey Aubrey you are the Captain of the holiday Police Department and you come and find Lauren Michaels for having all the black people at work on Martin Luther King Day the office was busting out laughing it because I go in there I say What would everybody want to say cuz I don't give a fuck, you know, I'm saying I just be having fun and then after that you leave the pitch and You go you can either stay and talk talk and groups and figure out what you're gonna do for Tuesday or you leave I leave our state blah blah blah and then Tuesday you write all day We get to the office to three o'clock. We don't leave till two three o'clock And then Wednesdays, you got to wake up at eight go over your sketches with your writers fix it Maybe you'll go back to sleep about 10 30 11 sleep for 30 minutes get back up go to work until 11 p.m. 12 p.m. If you sketch get picked, you know cuz you got to produce it. So while also at this job I'm learning how to produce learning how to direct Learning how to make fast edits Because you got to pick your set You got to pick the clothes that people are gonna wear. You got to pick the outfits. You got to pick the wigs you got a If you write the sketch and they get picked you got to do it all of course you have help but You're learning the stuff. Did you do any of that before you went to SNL? No, no theater. No, nothing I went to an active school called the actors boot camp, but That was that Well, I think acting class is probably in some ways a little bit like comedy class Mm-hmm, you know, I think there's good ones in terms of acting class There's legitimate like real good places where people learn they really do and then there's also like acting lessons that are given by people That weren't really good actors. Yeah, they really make it as an actor and I'm teaching it I know a lot of people that'll teach you something That's the problem with comedy right like the comedy classes. They're not being taught by Dave Chappelle, right? You know, they're being taught by someone who's probably not that good at comedy Which is why they're teaching classes. Yeah, that's true. There's a lot of that but it does get you on stage though That's the benefit of it. I When I did get testing a lot of people did go to school they did they went to acting school They went to like improv schools second city ground links and all of that Because the more more I get to know people over there. I'm like, oh y'all went to school Yeah, oh I came from a little place with black walls called the comedy store Nothing about this it's kind of type of school though, you know, it's a type of performance school for sure That's what I'm saying. So I'm just and and with that then that's me saying to myself. What are you doing?