Saturday Night Live is back to basics for Season 50’s historic run on NBC, with plenty of new and returning guest hosts heading to the 2025 TV schedule (even if we don’t know all of them just yet). As its an important anniversary year, with several new specials offering fans behind-the-scenes details about “More Cowbell” and other classic moments, a variety of former writers have shared stories behind their first sketches that made it to air, and J.B. Smoove’s is understandably a doozy.
Beloved comedy actors like Sarah Silverman, Kevin Nealon and Jillian Bell — as well as creatives such as David Mandel, Michael Schur and Robert Smigel — shared their heavenly and hellish tales of pitching sketches to other SNL talents to Vanity Fair, with Curb Your Enthusiasm fan-favorite J.B. Smoove also lending his signature off-the-cuff perspective to the conversation.
Before breaking out some of his more bonkers ideas that both made it and didn’t, Smoove reflected on why he wasn’t necessarily the best bet as an SNL writer so soon after joining the show, explaining:
I didn’t get a lot of things on air, partly because I was still learning how to be a writer on that speed. That speed is different than writing a movie or writing a TV show at your leisure. This is live TV. They needed that shit yesterday.
Even if J.B. Smoove wasn't automatically equipped for turning fast-paced ideating into written sketches, he eventually found his footing, writing for SNL from Seasons 29-31, followed by a guest-writing spot in Season 32. And despite such a short stint, he earned a reputation for his pitch delivery, which he also talked about when pinpointing his first idea that was produced in full for an episode. As he put it:
They used to call me the king of the pitch, because I would pitch as if I was doing stand-up. I think the first one that even made it was ‘Butt Pregnant.’ That was with Kristen Wiig, and it was her first sketch too. And I got a big laugh in the room. Then one of the writers, when they went around to their turn to pitch their idea, they said, ‘My idea is I wanna help JB write "Butt Pregnant."'
I love that one of the other writers was apparently so confident in "Butt Pregnant" that they bypassed whatever ideas they might have had in order to back Smoove's plan. That, or maybe the writer's own ideas were ten times worse, like "Boob Pregnant" or "Lower Calf Pregnant."
JB Smoove also talked about some of the more random and oddball ideas he had that inevitiably did not make it all the way beyond the pitch stage and into the show. Check out those comments below, which reference an icky Johnny Knoxville sketch that could have likely been an FXX animated comedy in alternate reality. In his words:
I pitched lots of things that never got on. A guy who used to work in the bank and now he owns a deli and he can’t stop licking his finger to put cheese on bread, like how you count money. I pitched 'Urine Detective' for Johnny Knoxville. I pitched Tom Brady a sketch about the first player in the NFL to slap another player on the butt after a good play. I really had to figure out how I was gonna navigate through this new challenge for myself.
At some point, I can only hope that NBC throws money at a new comedy show that brings some of the wildest unproduced SNL sketches to life outside of the live format. I need to see how that finger-licking deli guy finally realizes what he's doing is gross.
Saturday Night Live will likely return with new episodes both before and after NBC airs the new documentary SNL50: The Anniversary Special on Sunday, February 16, which can be streamed after the fact with a Peacock subscription.
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