You don’t need to be a Saturday Night Live cast member to know the feeling of a room that’s just not having it. At the same time, those intrepid cast members delivering weekly laughs to the 2025 TV schedule have a lot more pressure to deliver, seeing as they’re part of that long-standing American comedy institution. So, that means they know exactly what it feels like to both kill a sketch and totally bomb.
Now, through a recent profile that saw Bowen Yang, Mikey Day, and Kenan Thompson commenting on what it feels like on both ends of the spectrum of success there are some lessons about bombing that even upcoming SNL hosts should keep in mind before appearing.
Mikey Day And Bowen Yang’s Feelings About Bombing During An SNL Sketch Are Super Relatable
A new piece from The Wall Street Journal saw several of Saturday Night Live’s notable players getting totally honest about the ups and downs of a live studio audience. Just in case you wanted to know what it feels like when a sketch on NBC’s late-night landmark is bombing, here’s writer/performer Mikey Day’s out-of-this-world description:
It’s odd how, during a bomb, there’s no sound. So if, like, two people laugh, that’s super loud.
Comedians aspiring to make it in any medium fully understand that there’s always a chance that you’re not going to hit with the audience. Creator Lorne Michaels’ empire of laughter is no exception, which has led to plenty of examples of SNL sketches that didn’t go as planned on either side of the coin.
But no matter how many modest successes you encounter between the “Domingos” and the “Spartan Cheerleaders” of the world, a bomb hits way differently. Tina Fey’s previous “bombing” recollections certainly painted that sort of picture, while including a coping mechanism she and former co-star Rachel Dratch had for those awkward moments.
As for current cast member Bowen Yang, his thoughts on Saturday Night Live failures invoke a bit of knowledge handed down from Mr. Michaels himself:
Lorne’s mantra is: The audience is never wrong. It doesn’t matter how funny or prepared you are in your piece. If it doesn’t land in the room, it’s not going to play at home. And if the audience in the bleachers doesn’t like it, then that’s not their fault.
While there are certainly a lot of lessons to be learned from the not-so-pleasant side, we can still learn quite a bit from the brighter side of things. Which is a good time to lean on a long-time legendary cast member like Kenan Thompson.
Kenan Thompson’s Description Of An SNL Sketch Hitting Makes It All Worth It
As of this fall, Kenan Thompson will have been on SNL for 22 years, which has made him the longest cast member to have stayed with the show. So he’s pretty high up on the list of people in Studio 8H who know how flops and hits affect the room.
Kenan Thompson’s description of what it feels like to see a sketch soar on a Saturday night seems to make it all worth it, especially when this sensory detail says it all:
[Laughter that explodes] like someone punching through paper. It’s a real impact to your ears, you know what I mean? You can feel it.
Whether it's a dud or a hit, Kenan Thompson's comment is a sort of callback that reinforces Bowen Yang's advice from Lorne Michaels.
It doesn't matter if you're sitting in the room or streaming SNL through a Peacock subscription: you know when either of those proposed results hit. Being able to think on the fly like the best at Saturday Night Live doesn’t always mean that you’ll win the crowd, but it does help prepare you to get up and do it all over again once you come back from commercial.
If anything, the bombing experience just makes hits like last year's viral Beavis and Butthead sketch all the more enjoyable, amping up the energy in a way that few have ever experienced. No matter what changes in terms of the world's tastes in comedy, those truths won't go away.
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