Christina Applegate Says ‘SNL’ Stars Were Mad About Her Iconic Sketch with David Spade & Chris Farley
There are just certain Saturday Night Live (SNL) sketches that stand the test of time. The ones that are still so hilarious decades later and prove the show has its great moments. One of these moments happened in 1993 when Christina Applegate was the host. She recently appeared on David Spade and Dana Carvey‘s podcast and opened up about how some of the SNL stars were not happy about the iconic performance.
Remind The sketch “Van Down by the River” is now a fan favorite because Spade and Applegate could barely hold in their laughter. In the sketch, Spade and Applegate play siblings. Their parents hire a motivational speaker after the cleaning lady finds weed in the house. Instead of a traditional motivational speaker, Chris Farley‘s character Matt Foley screams at them and warns them if they continue with weed they’ll end up “living in a van down by the river!” Applegate said that she managed to keep it together until Farley came out in character and it was just so much funnier and over-the-top than the rehearsal.
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She admitted to Spade, “No, that’s like ‘in trouble’ stuff. You get in trouble there, if you laugh. You came down the stairs at the beginning and we had just done ‘Gap Girls,’ and you still had purple eyeshadow on. So now, I’m already done.” She added about Farley’s character, “He went so far into loony town, and Dave and I could not handle.”
“I think we broke at the same time,” Applegate recalled of her and Spade. “It was one thing he did and I could feel both of us trying to hold it in as much as we could. And then I put my hair in front of my eyes because I knew I had a line coming up. Like, my only funny line in the sketch, and I was like, ‘I’m going to say this freaking line.’”
She revealed that SNL alums Julia Sweeney and the late Phil Hartman, who played their parents in the sketch, seemed angry that they laughed. She said, “Julia and Phil were so— kinda looking at us like they were mad at us. They were very professional… And we were not.” Do you remember watching this sketch live? What do you think about it?
Classic Comedy Duos
March 2021
Chuckle at television & films funniest comic duos.
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