It’s been a week and I’m still thinking about some of the great moments longtime Saturday Night Live fans got with SNL50. My personal favorite moment of the night (outside of Jenna Ortega getting squished) was probably when Colin Jost and Bill Murray verbally sparred during “Weekend Update,” leading the Season 50 guest star to rank all of the ‘Update’ hosts and joke about the origins of his onscreen partner Danny Aykroyd’s famous “Jane, you ignorant slut” line.
While the big news with “Weekend Update” probably had to do with Colin Jost predicting SNL50 would be a petri dish (it totally was), when Murray took to the stage, he hilariously ranked the majority of the “Update” hosts who have delivered barbs and fake interviews from behind the desk over the years. It was during his little monologue that the “true story” of “Jane, you ignorant slut” came up.
It’s a true story: I was the first to call Jane ‘an ignorant slut.’ Backstage. Danny had the brilliant idea to say it on camera and really, really mean it.
It's a funny bit, but that got me to thinking about how the OG cast actually feels about the oft-repeated phrase, and the “Point/Counterpoint” sketch that accompanied it decades ago.
How Dan Aykroyd And Jane Curtain Feel About ‘Jane, You Ignorant Slut.’
I actually remember reading Live From New York a few years ago, and feeling like not enough time was devoted to the origins of the short-lived but famous “Weekend Update” duo. Aykroyd is often open to speaking about SNL, but he only opened up briefly about the sketch and his time in the chair in the uncensored history book, but this is all we get:
I did ‘Update’ for one season, I think, and I wasn’t comfortable in it. I didn’t like it. They only gave it to me because Chevy had gone. ‘Jane, you ignorant slut’ really caught on – that was great – but delivering the jokes and being the newsreader was not something that I was comfortable with. I was very happy to be relieved of that.’
Without context, or in this era of soundbites, “Jane, you ignorant slut” hasn’t aged particularly well. With context it’s still pretty funny: A prim, proper and absolutely accurate Curtain would say something completely reasonably and then Aykroyd would make a point to be argumentative and shoot her down two pegs with the “ignorant slut” line.
It’s meant to make him the buffoon, not her, and she said that when the moments were being written, she thought they were amusing.
It was a different time. It did not offend me. I’d hear it on the street. But you’d get catcalls on the street all the time because you were a woman. So it was a part of life. And the fact that they were calling the Shana Alexander character I was playing [based on a real-life liberal columnist] an ignorant slut, I thought was kind of funny. She was so buttoned-up.
The only problem sounds like the catcalls that she got after the line broke big, but from what Curtain told THR that was happening on the streets all the time anyway in the ‘70s. Though she did say in Live From New York there were some early cast members who “didn’t think women were funny” and went on to name them: John Belushi and Chevy Chase.
She found the fact they didn't love doing sketches with women “stunning,” but when it came to her “Weekend Update” chair, she thought the sketch was funny, though the then-common catcalling that came after was less appealing. Plus, it sounds like the fact the line is still synonymous with her name when she is out in public has given her a lot of SNL-adjacent empathy for people like Alec Baldwin who are "so done" with characters.
She revealed separately in the magazine interview that she sees why people sometimes take a step back from certain characters on the show.
I think [Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump] is wonderful. But I can understand why he doesn’t want to do it anymore. You get labeled, like ‘Jane, you ignorant slut.’ It still haunts me.
At the end of the day, this catchphrase defined the Aykroyd/Curtain era of SNL's "Weekend Update" in the same vein "that's the news...good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow" defined Chevy Chase's run on the show. (Or "Really" defined Seth Meyers; I could go on.) And I'm glad we were reminded of that during SNL50 ... even if Bill Murray wanted to take partial credit.
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