“Saturday Night Live” alum Noël Wells has a theory on why the sketch show is betting — and winning — big on political content: they’re making up for lost time.
Wells starred as a featured player on one season starting in 2013 and expressed disappointment that it was not more political before the latest election cycle.
“My frustration when I was on the show is that we weren’t doing that to begin with,” Wells told TheWrap of ratings-grabbing sketches like Melissa McCarthy as White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and Kate McKinnon as Donald Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway.
“I wanted to be on the show to do political comedy … and now they’re riding a wave because there’s a populist backlash against what’s happening [in the country],” added the filmmaker, who’s in Austin for the SXSW Conference and Festivals with her directorial and star turn in the indie “Mr. Roosevelt.”
“There wasn’t more teeth to what was happening, it was not there. This has been a long time coming. The Trump presidency was inevitable just because of the way politics was going. Something was going to happen,” she concluded.
Watch a clip below from her interview with TheWrap CEO Sharon Waxman, and featuring costar Nick Thune. More of TheWrap’s compete SXSW coverage to come.
#WrapSXSW: #SNL alum @realtomhankz says show making up for lost time with political sketches. pic.twitter.com/ioIpGU9zVj
— TheWrap (@TheWrap) March 11, 2017