Saturday Night Live's Ana Gasteyer on How She Cooked Up Her Legendary Martha Stewart Impression on the Fly, Writing With Will Ferrell, and Why ‘SNL’...

To read all of GQ’s coverage of Saturday Night Live’s 50th anniversary, click here.

Ana Gasteyer was on Saturday Night Live during the new Golden Age, bridging the late nineties and early aughts. It was a supremely funny time, but also notable for another reason. “Mine was the beginning of an incredible era for women at the show,” she told GQ.

From 1996 until 2002, Gasteyer—one of a great SNL cast members who came up via the LA comedy troupe The Groundlings—made us laugh in part because she was so good at playing it straight even while being ridiculous, whether as one half of the musical duo the Culps with Will Ferrell, as a hilariously reserved radio host in the “Delicious Dish” sketches, or as a pitch-perfect Martha Stewart. In this interview, conducted as part of the reporting process for the GQ feature “Saturday Night Forever,” Gasteyer spoke to us about watching the original cast as a child, her eerily silent audition, and why the guest hosts are usually on such good behavior.

Who was your favorite cast member when you first started watching the show?

I mean, I'm OG. I was a kid kid. I was really little. It would probably be Gilda, I would have to say. Funny, funny characters. But Jane Curtin as well. I was a weird child in that I found really dry, mature performers hilarious. Bob Newhart and that style. So I really loved Jane Curtin as well. I knew that she could clip the edges of a joke sharper than anybody.

How about which era had the greatest cast?

Obviously the original cast just because it was so groundbreaking and it was small. But to pick one [cast] would be kind of unfair to the legacy. But specifically, I wanted to be a comedian when I first saw Jan Hooks and Nora Dunn work. That would've been when I was in college. Now I don't think that those casts were necessarily universally the best cast, because they were fluid at that point. So it's hard to say. And I think our cast was pretty damn good.

If you had to pick the single funniest cast member in all of SNL history, who comes to mind?

That is actually impossible. That is a physical impossibility. I mean, honestly for me it would be a tossup of Phil Hartman and Will Ferrell. They both are just consistently funny in everything they do.

How about during your time there? What was your favorite sketch that you were in?

Probably Bobbi and Marty [Culp] just because it was just soup to nuts so fun. I mean, there's the sketch that you see on TV and then there's everything that goes into making the sketch. I can't have a conversation about Saturday Night Live in my era there without talking about Paula Pell, who is now getting her flowers, finally, as a performer, but was such an instrumental behind the scenes engineer of so much wonder. And we wrote those Bobbi and Marty [sketches] with Will—they were just epic creations to do, to think about, to avoid, to procrastinate, to follow through on and repeat over and over and over again.

How about the best sketch that you worked on that didn't make it to the air?

This is a controversial thing to say, but I did not have a lot of experience with things not eventually making it to air. Sometimes they didn't make it that week and that would be disappointing. But almost universally, I did come from such a writer's era of SNL, not just in terms of the excellence of the writing staff from Adam McKay and Tina Fey’s leadership when I was there, Harper Steele—I mean, we had great, great writers, but also all of us were writers in that era. Because of that respect for really sharp comedy, if you had a sketch that was wonderful that didn't make it, it would come back. So I don't have a lot of bitter feelings about that, because generally speaking, it would pay off down the line.

How about your audition? What do you remember about that day and how did you celebrate once you were cast?

Well, I didn't really celebrate because here's what I remember: it was like being shot out of a cannon. We were flown to test at 8H, which is insane. At the 11th hour, the two big things that I was told were, They do not laugh in the audition, which was true.

Which is very weird when you're a comedian because your relationship to your bits is, the cadence of the laughs becomes part of how you hear it. So I would rehearse it in front of my husband who would sit stone-faced like Mount Rushmore and stare really aggressively, to practice doing it against a silent wall. And the other thing is that, again, Groundlings aren't impressionists—we're people who do characters and wigs and write comedy. And somebody got the word to me, They may come to you in the 11th hour [of the audition process] and ask for an impression. So I knew that in advance and I cooked up two impressions. I wasn't an impressionist, but I was like, I think I could do Martha Stewart. I thought she was kind of funny. And I subscribed to her magazine. And so I wrote and I knew enough to make it short and make it sweet, but make it funny. So those are the two things that I remember kind of pulling together fast.

And then I got into the elevator after my audition, and when you audition in the old days, the satellite feed was coming out to the network on the west coast. And so in 30 Rock, everybody had seen my audition. Which is a very weird feeling if you work at NBC. It's just the feeds are on throughout. I got onto the elevator and some random person was like, “Oh, that was really funny. I just watched your audition.” It was so validating because it was such a strange and silent experience.

How about your best story about a guest host?

I mean, generally speaking, [guest hosts] are on such good behavior because they really are being ruled by fear. It's a terrifying experience. I mean, I have such respect for people who host, because they show up in this crazy house. There's no syllabus for how your week is going to go. No one's going to break it down for you. And so I just have enormous respect for basically anyone who hosts, because they have to really have faith in what turns out to be a very effective but pretty makeshift system.

Why do you think SNL’s managed to last for 50 years?

I think its job has always been—because it started as sort of a revolutionary piece of television—to reflect culture back to itself. By the nature of it being live, it's immediate and it's probably riskier. There's not a lot of time spent hand-wringing and wondering if someone's going to be offended. Even the standards and practices are more chill at SNL, so you don't have this kind of delayed reaction, “Can we do that joke? Can we not do that joke?” And Lorne, of course, being the leader has always had a really bold foot forward on that stuff.

So I think the fact that it's reflecting culture quickly and effectively is its secret weapon. I mean, that's what comedy does. No matter how repressed a culture we are, no matter what times we're coming in and out of, that's what it's going to do well. And I am excited for the coming era because as much as it's a fraught and complicated time politically for our country, I think that there's a real place for the arts in general and for comedy and in specific to tell some truth in a world of misinformation. And I think that that's probably what it's done the best, is cut through.

And I don't just mean politically. I just mean literally now we're all looking back at Martha Stewart and going, “Oh my God, she was the first influencer.” She's an incredible woman. And meanwhile, I couldn't have done Martha Stewart if Martha Stewart didn't exist, and not coincidentally, mine was the beginning of an incredible era for women at the show. There are more female voices in culture at large, which means that we get to tell more stories as female comedians, which means that we reflect back what the world of women is in society. It's a whole kind of interesting feedback loop.

SNL50: The Anniversary Special airs at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on Sunday, Feb. 16, on NBC and Peacock.