Maya Rudolph says she couldn't create what she did on “Saturday Night Live” today
"It's scrutiny," the actress said.
Maya Rudolph isn't here for all the "scrutiny" the internet has brought to Saturday Night Live.
The actress, who is currently starring on Apple TV+'s Loot, opened up to Zane Lowe at Apple Music 1 about the extreme amount of instant online scrutiny creators face nowadays — and how that would've inhibited her ability to be creative back in her SNL days.
"[We are] creating in a time where there's so much criticism," she said. "I find it incredibly difficult. I find it personally more, just in being myself, far more than my comedy. I feel like people want to take a sound bite and create problems, and that's become a business. It's so ugly, and it's so not at all my life. It has nothing to do with me. So it just makes you shy away from wanting to put yourself out there."
"I stay away from [the internet]," she continued. "I don't really want to participate in that game because it's not my reality. And it's like that saying of 'What you think of me is not my business.' It's great, and it's really hard to remind yourself of, but it's true. I don't think I would be creating the things I created on Saturday Night Live if I worked there today. It's scrutiny."
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Maya Rudolph on 'Saturday Night Live'Related: Maya Rudolph credits Jack Black for getting her into improv in 8th grade
Rudolph says one major change between her stint on SNL, which lasted from 2000 to 2007, and today is the ready availability of sketches online.
"People didn't have access to the show in the way that they do now when I was on it," she said. "People weren't watching it from their phones the next day in just one sketch instead of watching the entire show. You would watch in its entirety."
Part of what she fears is lost from this immediate ability to judge something out of context is the ability to learn from bombing.
"Sometimes things tank," she explained. "We used to have this thing on Saturday Night Live that just for fun, we'd call it 's--- can alley,' where if something was in a really bad place where the audience couldn't really see you and the laughs tanked, it was usually a s--- can alley piece. Oh, it's horrifying when it's not working, but it makes you laugh really hard, and I think sometimes it makes it a little bit funnier. It's absolutely brutal."
Related: Final Saturday Night Live season 49 hosts are Maya Rudolph, Jake Gyllenhaal
Rudolph prefers to opt for an over-the-top approach to her comedy, particularly when do sketch comedy. On SNL, she created memorable characters like Jodi Dietz, one of the cohosts of Bronx Beat, as well as turning in countless iconic impressions of everyone from Oprah to Beyoncé (and now, as a guest star and host, Vice President Kamala Harris). She returns to the sketch comedy show as host on May 11.
Her style of comedy stems from a sense of wanting to maintain her privacy.
"There is no part of me that is interested in revealing every single layer of my soul to those that do not know me," she explained. "I like to keep some of those clothed, but then I go the extreme opposite; I wear armor. So all of my characters are huge, and I always say it is a form of drag for me. The art of drag is to be larger than life, the most female, female. It's just wonderful to wear armor because your sweet little sensitive soul gets protected."
Loot is currently airing its second season on Apple TV+.
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