Bill Hader is finally making himself a known entity in Hollywood, but for years he ruled the Saturday Night Live stage in New York. The former Not Ready For Primetime player popped up on Seth Meyers’ Late Night this week, and it wouldn’t be a true SNL reunion without a little Stefon talk. Luckily for fans, he revealed quite a bit of fascinating information, specifically about why he always covered his mouth.
“The thing that always made me laugh about Stefon, and people always ask me why I put my hands in front of my face like that, a lot of it was Seth… a person being patient with an insane person is my favorite thing in the world. Anybody would be like, ‘Dude get out of here, you’re not doing your job right.' But instead, anytime I would say something, you would go, ‘Now Stefon,’ and I would start laughing… You were being so patient with this maniac who had the simplest job in the world.”
You can get some more exciting, behind the scenes information by watching the video below...
Meyers brings up Stefon early in the interview, talking about the fact that Stefon actually didn’t start out as a Weekend Update character. Instead, he was written in to a sketch with Ben Affleck that Hader describes as a pretty tough piece that “barely worked.”
”I did do it once on air with Ben Affleck as a sketch. And it barely worked as a sketch with Ben Affleck. It was a long walk to get to what the sketch was about. “
Later, they figured out it would be a lot easier to just throw the hilarious character onto Weekend Update, where he could just be totally weird alongside Meyers’ straight man news anchor. Weekend Update actually worked a lot better for the character after that, and Hader says it even inspired Stefon’s signature move, hiding his face in his hands.
In each of the Stefon segments, Meyers would bring the character on as Weekend Update’s “City Correspondent” to talk about family friendly events happening around New York. Instead, Stefon would go on wild and vocal tangents about the hottest and craziest nightclubs opening in the area, leading him to make some of the greatest noises and facial expressions of all time. Here’s a look at one of the actor’s signature SNL sketches.
The two also touch on Hader and Meyers’ big wedding episode, as well as a few more SNL memories. Neither man is a part of the late night sketch comedy series any longer, but it’s nice to know they both still look fondly back at their time on the show. Maybe we’ll see the two reunite for SNL’s 40th Anniversary special, which is set to hit the schedule on February 15, 2015.
Late Night with Seth Meyers airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. ET on NBC.
