Harper Steele is taking credit for being the first person to incorporate a real drug into an episode of “Saturday Night Live.” The former writer and star of “Will & Harper” sat down with Seth Meyers to talk about how she crossed that live TV taboo.
The sketch happened during Season 26 of the NBC show, which was hosted by Lucy Liu with Jay-Z as the musical guest back in December 2000. Steele wrote a sketch that involved Will Ferrell’s stiff lounge singer Robert Goulet promoting a “rap-and-roll” album with Jay-Z. Throughout the bit, the rapper and two other men repeatedly take drags from a joint. After the sketch was performed during dress rehearsal, Jay-Z asked Steele to see him, a meeting she called “terrifying.”
“I get there between dress and air, and Jay-Z goes, ‘Can we get a real joint?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, you’re Jay-Z. Of course you can,’” Steele said. She then found an “SNL” staff member she knew had weed. “I got that joint. Jay-Z used it on air.”
“It’s an iconic sketch, and it’s fun to rewatch it because you can tell they have a real one,” Meyers told Steele.
That joint had immediate consequences. “First of all, the whole studio smelled like pot for the rest of the night,” Steele said. It also led to the women responsible for standards and practices at “SNL,” Betzy Torres-Mitchell, sending an intern to find Steele.
“I look at this little pimply-faced intern and I go, ‘You tell Betzy Torres that I went home,’” she added. “I do think that’s the first time a live drug was on the show ‘Saturday Night Live.’ I think everyone else is faking it. I got the first one on.”
