Ego Nwodim Is in Her Silly Season

Ego Nwodim had a number of hits over her first four seasons on Saturday Night Live (“Loco,” “Dionne Warwick Talk Show,” “Mid-Day News”), but things changed last year after “Lisa From Temecula,” a February 2023 sketch that not only was a breakout hit for the show but a creative breakthrough for Nwodim. On full display was something her fans from improv and podcasts like Scott Aukerman’s Comedy Bang! Bang! had long admired her for: unfettered joyful stupidity. Since that sketch, Nwodim has hit a groove on SNL with a steady stream of the silliest performances in the world, like as Katt Williams and the Jamaican preacher Father Lawrence. In all of them is a mix of luck, fate, and Nwodim’s type-A, overprepared work ethic. Here, Nwodim breaks down her journey through six of her biggest, silliest, best-loved characters.

If you listen back to some episodes of Comedy Bang! Bang!, when someone’s really struggling with their character, Scott will ask them, “How did you get started doing this?” So there are a few episodes where he asks me that, but generally I’m like, What can just sustain over the duration of a podcast? What is a game that could just be played in how I respond to things? Especially since no one’s going to get to see any sort of visual cues.

I admittedly was in Italy, on a cliff, eating pasta when I came up with Pastor Pasta. Because I do love pasta so much, I thought it would be fun if I were a disciple of that beloved starchy deliciousness. There’s so much there: If you have a clergyman of pasta, what else is true of this person? They like sauce, too, probably.

Entrée PeeE Neur just assumes they’ve got all these brilliant ideas, but all those things exist already. When I go in, I think, How many objects are there in the world that I can deny knowing exist and start off as a rectangle? The truth is I didn’t do the rectangle thing on purpose. In attempting to describe many things, you realize a lot of things are built from rectangles. If you know this one thing about a person, all the other things about this person you can assume are true are fair game. Entrée doesn’t know what things are, so what else doesn’t Entrée know? But also, Entrée thinks she’s brilliant. She, he, they — I can’t remember which it was last time.

I have thought about bringing them to SNL, but because of how my little demented brain works, I don’t know how I would make them work. They feel so remarkably heightened in a way that I imagine — he hasn’t told me this — Lorne would hate. He doesn’t comment on any particular sketch, but sometimes he’ll say, “You’re too smart. You don’t have to think that hard about some things.” And yet I can be as insane and silly as I am on Bang! Bang! because Bang! Bang! feels like a blank canvas where Scott really allows you to do anything. While the podcast has existed for 15 years — happy birthday! — SNL has existed for 50 years. You have to find a way to marry your voice to the voice of the show. While I would love to bring Pasta or Entrée, I need to think of a packaging that makes it work. Something would have to happen on, like, Shark Tank, or the Vatican announces a new pasta.

I just remember Gary Richardson and Alex English saying she’s an auntie. I have played all kinds of aunties, and Lisa is her own version of an auntie. I love playing characters who are strong and wrong, who are disruptive and indignant about it. Lisa was a perfect dream for me. The thing is Lisa thinks that steak is amazing, and she’s so oblivious to any alternative options. All she’s concerned about is what she likes. She’s not concerned about what anyone thinks of it. And to Lisa, she couldn’t possibly care about shaking the table. She sees no problem with enjoying her meal.

Imagine that person defending you in the court of law. You want that person who’s like, “I will not be silenced.” She’s also out of touch with reality, but maybe there’s something to that. Similarly, she always thinks people are flirting because she’s like, I’m so well liked. I’m attractive. Everybody wants something from me. I’m an “It” girl. I like what I like, and everyone picks up on my unapologetic vibes and they like it.

Tom Broecker, our costume designer, is remarkable at helping build these characters and realities. He presented me with a few options, and I saw that sweater Lisa wears. That is an ugly sweater, but it’s the sweater of a woman who really thinks she’s fucking doing it. I was like, “That is the sweater hands down. It’s loud. It’s got a point of view. And I bet you the woman who wears that thinks she’s fucking killing it.” 

Friday evening, Lorne calls us into his office. I was like, He’s going to just say, “Hey, guys. Lovely idea, but it’s not going to work.” Every step of the way, I just thought, It’s too silly. I’m having so much fun doing it. No way does it go. But he called us in to tell us to give the character a name. It was just “My baby sister Lisa is joining us.” And Lorne said to try to give her a more memorable name so people can cling to that. We came up with a bunch of names mashed together.

God freaking bless. I love Veronda. She’s so annoying. I love playing these confident people who are a hot mess. The fun of it for me is how she is so amused with herself and getting to be like, “Even if you’re not enjoying me, I’m enjoying me, honey.” And she’s so unapologetically that way you kind of start to enjoy her, and there’s something endearing about it — even the whole “I could do your job” part.

Me, Asha Ward, Alex English, and Gary Richardson pitched on it a bunch and then I typed up a draft. I read the draft and said, “Can we write it in the room? Because I’m going to improvise and be silly and then we can actually see and hear what these things sound like.” So Asha and I ended up writing a whole new draft together.

The “I could do your job” part came from there being jokes that were clever but not really funny. I wanted to include these jokes, but I didn’t think they would get us that much. I was like, “Some of these jokes are mid, but what if she thinks they’re fucking hilarious?” When I watched it back, I heard people actually laughing at some of those jokes. I guess I can be hard on myself, and my standard can be too high at times.

I told my friend Patrick McDonald I really wanted to do an “Update” feature that week. He doesn’t work at the show, but we’re very close and have collaborated a bunch at UCB. He was like, “What about Charlotte the Stingray?” And I came up with an angle for it where she comes out like she’s on an episode of Maury. 

I wrote that one with Asha Ward, Alex English, and Gary Richardson. I woke up Saturday, first thing in the morning, and was like, The jokes need to be stronger! Right now it’s just cute. This is where my type-A studiousness comes in: I’m in my dressing room Saturday writing new jokes on the back of a different script. I thought about how everyone wants to know who my baby daddy is, so I wrote, “Michael, boy, do I have some news for you. You’re going to be a daddy!” I asked Gary, Alex, and Asha if I could change the top line — it was like, “You don’t know me, haters!” — and they all were like, This girl and her meticulousness. So we threw that in at dress, and it got a huge laugh, but the rest didn’t really pay off since we went with the rest of what we had.

After dress, Michael was like, “Why don’t you guys just follow that funny?” So they rewrote a lot of what we had, rearranging or reorganizing jokes we had to be about Michael. I still smile just thinking about “I’ve been near males, but none of them been men. None of them been Mr. Michael Che.” If you watch, I’m desperately trying not to break. Thank God for the camera cuts because I was laughing after I said it. I’m proud of myself because the way she’s saying that was not on the page.

I fucking love this. I live for this. Because I love improv, and I actually don’t know how any of this is going to work because we’ve never done it. We just know my new intro that I pitched absolutely works. I say this respectfully: I love my collaborators, but they took out one of our strongest jokes, I think by accident, while they were chopping and screwing and doing surgery and rearranging it between dress and air. Reading the new script right before going on, I thought, Okay, you’re going to have to remember to improvise the Nat Geo line because it’s not on the cards. So I was like, Okay, armor up. You’re going to say that line when Michael says this. I love getting the fuck with him up there.

I have these voices I speak in with my friends all the time. I have this guy, Jamal, I play with my friends in conversation — like, I’m talking in regular conversation with my friends at a regular dinner, and I’m acting like Jamal. I have all these things that I do that I think of as just pure play where I’m just fucking around with my friends. I don’t think about them as a thing I can bring to work.

That week, my friend sent an Instagram Reel of this pastor in Jamaica conducting church that way, and he had an original banger, “Under the Blood.” I was just like, I want to go to that church. I told Please Don’t Destroy I’d love to play this guy, and they were onboard immediately. It’s the play everyone responds to.

I was raised Christian. I’d like to still think that I am. It is a huge part of who I am and who I strive to be as a person. I’m certainly not getting it right all the time, but I also believe God created me to be the way that I am with my fucking sense of humor. So I’m running with it instead of trying to make it into something else or make it fit into an idea that someone, somewhere, made up. Father Gregory Boyle wrote in one of his books that nothing is beyond the sanctity of God. I think that’s really beautiful. God made all of us and all of this — even the profane work I do. You gifted me this skill.

Listen to the full interview with Nwodim on Vulture’s Good One podcast below: