Steve Martins 2006 Saturday Night Live For Seth Meyers, Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone, the hosting gig still stands out. But not for the right reasons.
In the Monday episode of April 29th The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcastthe team talked about the surfer sketch they had been working on for Martin.
Meyers said he “thinks about it all the time, especially because he brings it up every time I see Steve Martin.”
He asked his co-hosts to explain the “Surf Meeting” sketch, noting, “You wrote it.”
“‘Surf Meet’ for us was a classic format where one person sucked and wasn’t able to take a hit over and over again, like way too many times,” Samberg said. In the sketch, Samberg asks Martin’s character, who is “wearing an old-fashioned bathing suit and looking super goofy,” to leave.
“It made us laugh so hard when we wrote it,” Samberg said. “We thought, ‘This is the best thing ever.’ It actually played great at the table and we said, “We did it!” “We did a super funny sketch for Steve Martin where he kills and we can put it on the show.” ”
“The first time we rehearsed it without cameras, everyone laughed again and we said, ‘Oh yeah, it’s the best,’ and then we just started rehearsing it and for some reason it started to wear off,” he says continued.
What happened is controversial.
Samberg said it might have been something that wasn’t meant to be lived out. Taccone blamed the production and the many characters for this.
Schaffer noted that Martin tried to be “a lot sillier to try and save the sketch,” which Taccone agreed with.
“When morale plummeted due to the success of the skit, Steve fought so damn hard,” Taccone recalls. “And I actually remember the intermediate dress [rehearsal] and air, went in to give him the final comments on it, was very discouraged and just said, “I wish we had more time,” and he was like, “I wish that too.” It’s so good, and it will not be good.’ “
Samberg said Martin was “upset about it because he liked it and we all thought it was going to be a success and it had a great rhythm to it.”
But Samberg added, “Writing a surf meeting was one of the funniest moments of my entire time on SNL.”
Meyers provided the coda to the story. “The great thing and why ‘Surf Meeting’ endures for me is that for all its successes, it is a failure that still sticks with Steve Martin.”