what happens when you sleep outside of rockefeller center for 12 hours and don't drink any water but eat a lot of grapes
you sit next to theo james and dylan o'brien and watch keke palmer host saturday night live ... we can all relate
After the 40th-anniversary show of Saturday Night Live aired eight years ago, I watched a YouTube video of Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show talking about the special’s afterparty. In it, he apologized for the number of times he was about to name-drop the people he saw at the party. And while my weekend is not going to have as many names as he did, I’m about to do the same thing. The only difference is: I shan’t apologize for it.
What Do You Get When Three People In Their Mid-Twenties Living In New York City Never Say No To Literally Any Opportunity They Can Get Their Hands On All The Time Like Do They Even Get Any Sleep Ever And Also Someone Should Send Them Some Emergen-C? You get amazing seats at Saturday Night Live with musical guest Sza and host Miss Keke Palmer! Now, as I said in the voice memo before I was rudely interrupted by a banana peel, I have gotten no sleep this weekend. So I think all I can do in today’s newsletter is my absolute BEST. I bet you thought I was gonna say that I can’t do anything, huh? What would the cast of SNL think of me if I said that? The cast that never gets any sleep? And still puts in that effort every Saturday Night? There are no excuses in the Circle Back newsletter. I will say that I just went to get a coffee and a person near me sneezed and someone else said Bless You to them and I responded Thank You. So that should get you ready for how your reading of this will go. Alright, time to tell you exactly how my weekend went, minute after minute!
This all dates back to about … two weeks ago when we discovered that Keke Palmer was gonna be hosting SNL with musical guest Sza. My besties Brenna and Owen once camped out for SNL for the Kim Kardashian episode and got in, so when they had the gorgeous idea of doing that for Keke, I was ALL THE heck IN. Here’s how it works: at 10 am on the Thursday before that week’s show, you have to enter your submission to get one of the 300 Standby tickets, and you can request, at most, four tickets. When Owen submitted it, the application closed at 10:02, and we were number 180 in line. How many people they let into the dress rehearsal and the live show depends on how many guests are brought by the host and the cast members and the crew. Sometimes, 50 people get into the live show, and sometimes, way fewer. But being one of the 300 allows you to go camp out on 49th St. in front of the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center, and so that is what we did Friday night from 7 pm to 7 am.
Friday night, we arrived on the street with blankets, those folding chairs that moms use at high school soccer games, a large thing of grapes, and a dream. And for the next 12 hours, we bonded, learned our fellow camping neighbors’ deepest most darkest secrets, and answered tons of questions from tourists about why we were camping on the street. We were asked FIFTY-NINE times by tourists about what we were doing. Here are the notes to prove it:
A little bummed that we never hit 60, but you can’t win ‘em all.
Around 3:45 in the morning when the wind began to pick up and trying to sleep wasn’t working out so well, we went for a little stroll through the most beautiful part of Manhattan: Times Square. There’s a Walgreens over there that allegedly is open 24 hours and has a bathroom, but neither of those facts was true. And when we walked by the Rockefeller tree at that early hour, we discovered that the lights weren’t even on. Illusion shattered. More like illumination shattered. The spirit of Christmas was not among us at Rockefeller Center. Well, the Fox News tree was lit, actually, but that is irrelevant.
At 7 am, the security guard told us to WAKE UP, and we got our standby tickets as the rain began to fall. I got home at 8 and thought I slept until 1 pm, but I felt absolutely bonkers trying to do the rest of my day. Then, at 9:30 pm, the three of us were dressed as cute and SNL-y as we could and made it to the Rockefeller Center gift shop, which is where we lined up by our standby numbers to try to get into the show.
That’s right, folks! Just because we slept on the street all night didn’t mean that we were for sure gonna get into the show the next day. But luckily, even though we were number 180-182 online, we were actually number 37-39 in the official line. We were feeling confident about our future acceptance into the studio with those numbers until the girly in front of us — who has done this process three times — told us that the last time she went, they cut it off at 37. This girl who was number 36 tonight decided to tell numbers 37-39 this information. And I only had three thoughts about her decision to do this:
how dare you
what kind of person are you
i’m having a heart attack
Here’s how it starts: you line up in the gift shop. Then, they take you row by row into the stairwell, which may feel like means you’re getting into the show, but it isn’t fully true. As you wait on the stairs in pairs of two with one step between each pair (very strict instructions by the bald security man who you can tell runs this building like the back of his hand — what kind of saying is that?), you hear the security guy tell the first 30 people to walk through the doors and to the elevator — the elevator aka heaven’s pearly gates. Of course, hearing him call the first 30 made us feel like Keke Palmer did nothing to try to get us in, but then we thought, Okay, there are probably three elevators that they use, and you can only put 10 people in an elevator. And let me tell ya: thank GOD that dumb thought was correct because Guess Who The Fuck Was Called Next. The Clonard Trivia’s own: THE SLAYDIES — Owen, Brenna, and Yours Truly. As we enter the elevator, we get a wristband thrown at us and are told to shut off our phones before the elevator opens back up. As we all shake in excitement, I perfectly place the wristband on Brenna’s wrist and don’t like the sticky part attach to ANY arm hairs. And then Brenna, the thoughtful person she is, made sure that my wristband would never fall off because she attached the sticky part exclusively to my arm hair. Such a good friend. Always looking out for me.
Next, we hand them our standby card and get brought into the studio, already packed and hustling and bustling. The sets are being moved around, and the Saturday Night Live band is jamming. This studio is SMALL. Being on the balcony was being maybe 40 feet away from the host during their monologue. No matter where you are, you’re close and you’re so excited about it. We were sitting in the left back, which gave us a perfect shot of the monologue and the artist's stage. There are TV screens all over the audience to watch the digital shorts and to see what everyone else would be seeing on their screens at home while at the same time watching the behind-the-scenes of it. We were sitting at the end of the row, near the lighting booth and a door that led to a secret room — more on this secret room later … in a few seconds.
I am literally getting delirious as I write this the room is currently spinning.
I just wanted to give you a brief intermission with a new Cher tweet, but now we’re back.
With 10 minutes until the show, Michael Che came out to explain to us how everything was gonna work and made a few jokes. After that, Kenan Thompson came out with Chloe Fineman, Ego Nwodim, and Heidi Gardner to do a pre-show warm-up song for the audience. And then, less than a minute later, the first sketch began.
As the first sketch was on, I discovered what the door with the secret room next to me was for because Gen-Z’s Teen Wolf crush, Dylan O’Brien, walked out of it and sat two feet away from us for most of the show. Twas a room for celebs, everybody. But we didn’t gawk or stare much — we didn’t need to since he was straight up sitting beside us. We thought, of course, we’d see someone since it’s SNL. And when Jim Gaffigan showed up next to us, too, we weren’t phased. But then, someone else walked out of the secret room and sat in the chair closest to our aisle that we were at the end of — someone that was impossible to not gawk at for five seconds at a time. I have known about this man for years but was only just recently introduced to his Divergent movie series through my friend Natalie (who I have mentioned maybe once before but have been given the same critique for every episode of Circle Back which is that I don’t mention her enough in it). Yes, I am speaking of White Lotus hottie Theo James. THEO JAMES. The most beautiful man I have ever seen on television, and now the most beautiful man I have ever seen in person. I have never had such a reaction to seeing someone like that before. My face was red. I was having hot flashes. I got light-headed. He was sitting directly to our left, and if he had looked at us for one second longer, I would have thrown up. And while we loved seeing them, we were fully focused on Keke Palmer (obviously not did you just hear that I was sitting next to Theo James) stealing the entire show with her talent. That girl was born to be a performer, I’ll tell ya that much. And then, her monologue broke Twitter:
Keke Palmer, a star we grew up with on Nickelodeon and Disney only to discover she is only four years older than me, announced that she was pregnant, which is probably the most historic thing to come out of 2022. Keke Palmer aka True Jackson VP aka Akeelah and the frickin Bee aka our Lord and Savior was one of the best hosts I have ever seen. I know I’d probably say that for anyone I saw live, but I watched the clips after on YouTube, and I’m here to say that she was so incredible and professional. She didn’t even need the cue cards.
Speaking of the cue cards, the work they put into this show is jaw-dropping. Watching the crew speedily change the sets and get the props and place the actors in their spots is overwhelming. When there were commercials on TV, there was so much movement in the studio. The actors goofing around and chatting right up until the five-second countdown was so fun, and Keke not knowing which way to point when introducing Sza right before introducing her live was the icing on the non-dairy cake. These people WORK. Lorne sure knows who he’s hiring because these people are made for this life. AND I WANT IN eventhoughiamsosleepyrightnow.
This was one of the best experiences I’ve ever … experienced. I’m not thinking of synonyms right now.
I am so blown away by it all. 10/10 would do it again. And I can’t wait to watch the new episode of The White Lotus tonight so I can see my very good friend Theo James act his little acting off. And soon, I will sleep a very deep sleep and not even know where I am when I awaken. And one day someday after that, maybe I won’t sleep ever again if Lorne Michaels knows what’s good for him. But for now, I will sell reusable bags and write this newsletter and eat some grapes.
I hope you all enjoyed reading about my weekend. It was just like any other.
movie rec: Addams’ Family Values (1993)
tv show rec: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip — this show is only one season long because it got canceled, but it does an a m a z i n g job at showing the behind the scenes of a show like Saturday Night Live … and Sarah Paulson is in it and it’s really fun I highly recommend
book rec: i dunno i didn’t read a damn thing this week can’t you see that i was too busy
music rec: S.O.S. album by Sza, which comes out this Friday
sleep rec: me
also i know i didn’t talk about it at all but i’ll just mention that whoopi goldberg said she just got the sister act 3 script and i am calling it that keke palmer will be in it
👏👏👏
i was so excited for this one once i saw you were going — now that i’ve finished the episode and rereading your experience it was fun to imagine witness the chaos. thank you for sharing!