One person’s cringe is another’s comedy gold.
Saturday Night Live alum Ana Gasteyer is looking back at one of her sketches that had the cast and writers “screaming with laughter,” but didn’t land so well with the studio audience.
During a recent appearance on Amy Poehler‘s Good Hang podcast, the two former cast members reminisced about a surprising pastime many SNL stars took part in: watching their past sketches that had bombed with the audience.
“It’s what the kids would call cringe, but it’s even post-cringe. It’s like beyond cringe,” Poehler described, equating the experience to “a primal scream.”
Gasteyer agreed that it was “like a community therapy experience” for the performers, and recalled one sketch in particular that the audience just hated.
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Ana Gasteyer and Amy Poehler
Gastyer said it was a sketch about a morning zoo crew that “was the loudest sketch ever” and also starred Chris Parnell, Will Ferrell, and the episode’s host, whom she couldn’t remember. The basic premise was a really loud squad of radio VJs obnoxiously reacting to a weather chopper crash.
“People at the table were screaming with laughter [it was] so funny,” she said of the meeting where the cast and writers read scripts for sketches to decide which will make it to the live show.
Then when it came time to perform it in the studio, she recalled the audience reaction being more like they were watching “a dramatic play, a Tony-winning, Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatic play about a zoo crew.”
She described the crowd watching the comedy bit as “deathly silent, like a wall, like the audience in [Studio] 8H looked like a painting and the whole time you’re like screaming.”
Poehler asked if the experience gave Gasteyer the giggles.
“Yes, ’cause it was so embarrassing,” the Happiest Season actress replied. “It was also just hilarious ’cause it was like the whole time you’re like they don’t think this is funny. They listen to morning zoos. This is what it sounds like if you like driving to work and listening to that, then that’s just kind of a pleasant thing for you. That was embarrassing.”
The actress did not clarify whether the bombing happened during dress rehearsal or the live show. Entertainment Weekly has reached out to reps for Gasteyer for more details on the sketch in question and will update if we hear back.
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Gasteyer was a cast member from 1996-2002, and, of course, had plenty of hit sketches, including “Delicious Dish” and her Martha Stewart impressions. Poehler joined the show’s cast in season 27, which was Gasteyer’s last. In addition to their short overlap at SNL, Gasteyer and Poehler both starred in Mean Girls and Wine Country.
Watch Poehler’s full interview with Gasteyer on Good Hang above.
Saturday Night Live returns with new episodes on Saturday, Jan. 17, 2026, with host Finn Wolfhard and mustcal guest A$AP Rocky.
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