When Reese Witherspoon obtained the decision about starring in a brand new romantic comedy, she solely wanted to listen to two phrases: Will Ferrell. “I was like, ‘I’m in,’” she stated throughout a current look on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. It had been greater than 20 years since their final skilled collaboration; for Witherspoon, the chance to reunite felt like a “bucket list” second.
Witherspoon and Ferrell star as warring love pursuits in Prime Video’s You’re Cordially Invited, a comedy of errors from writer-director Nicholas Stoller about two weddings booked on the identical weekend. But they first met when Witherspoon hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live again in 2001. “She was a big deal, and we were like lowly Saturday Night Live cast members,” Ferrell informed Entertainment Tonight of his first impression of Witherspoon. “That’s not true,”the Oscar winner replied. “He was a big superstar. And I had just done Legally Blonde, so I’d had my only hit movie ever.”
Adding to the stress of her internet hosting debut? Witherspoon’s episode aired on Saturday, Sept. 29, 2001—a mere 18 days after a lethal terrorist assault on the United States. “I was scared out of my mind, it was right after 9/11,” Witherspoon just lately informed BuzzFeed UK.
“There were lots of people saying, ‘I don’t think you can go on,’” sequence creator Lorne Michaels informed Rolling Stone in 2021, on the episode’s twentieth anniversary. “We’ve faced that many times before, but you just have to find a way to do it. I knew it was very, very important that we show up.”
Some celebrities balked on the concept of internet hosting a sketch comedy sequence so quickly after tragedy, however Witherspoon was up for the problem. “Reese just had her baby, and she got on the plane, and she came in and she was fearless,” Michaels recalled. “She was great and was like, ‘Whatever you need.’ I’ve always admired her enormously for that time.”
SNL’s first post-9/11 present started on a somber, patriotic word. Then-New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani made a speech alongside native firefighters and law enforcement officials earlier than Paul Simon carried out an emotional rendition of “The Boxer,” although that chilly open will not be included within the model of the episode at the moment streaming on Peacock. Some might understand the opening to be “mawkish or uncritical or not very ballsy,” former SNL author Harper Steele informed Rolling Stone, however she will defend it: “There’s just no way to go back in time and give people a feeling of what the world was like at that moment.”
The remainder of the episode was much more lighthearted. There was an installment of Celebrity Jeopardy that includes Ferrell’s Alex Trebek, and a sketch involving Witherspoon as an Ariel-esque mermaid who tries to seduce Ferrell as a lovestruck sailor. During her SNL monologue, Michaels instructed Witherspoon to inform a prolonged joke involving a polar bear’s testicles. “You’re gonna tell a joke and you’re gonna say a bad word,” she just lately recalled him saying. “It’s important.”
Michaels beforehand informed Rolling Stone, “The joke about the polar bear was given to me by Randy Newman, and I laughed. I thought, ‘Maybe we can do that.’”
But some, like then-SNL author Hugh Fink, thought it was a mistake to not acknowledge 9/11 within the monologue. “If she had done that joke any other show, any other season, as a viewer you’d go, ‘Oh, Reese Witherspoon. She’s likable. She’s not a comedian. We give her slack since she’s a pretty, talented actress telling a joke,’” he defined. “But at the time, it seemed like a bit of a disconnect. Not only was she not addressing 9/11, but, we’re going in the opposite direction. We’re not saying terrorism. We’re having a host that’s telling an old joke.”
Still, Fink recommended Witherspoon for stepping as much as host throughout a time of turmoil. “There was a nervous energy since this was the first show back. People were very intrigued [about] what we were going to do. People were still scared,” he stated. “But Reese had a very calm, nice demeanor that made people think, ‘She’s here. She’s up for this.’”