Jim Downey on ‘SNL,’ Trump, Jeffrey Epstein Bit and ‘OBAA’

In comedy, few are as influential — and elusive — as Jim Downey.

During his 30-year tenure as a writer on “Saturday Night Live,” he penned era-defining sketches like Chris Farley’s “Chippendales Audition” and defined the show’s political satire with Dana Carvey’s George H.W. Bush (“na ga da it”) and Will Ferrell’s W. Bush (“strategery”). 

For many years he was the voice of “Weekend Update,” launching with Norm Macdonald a comedic crusade against O.J. Simpson that resulted in both of them getting fired by NBC. (Downey returned two years later and eventually retired in 2013.) Lorne Michaels has called him the “voice” of “Saturday Night Live” and the “best political humorist alive.”

Outside of occasional appearances on “SNL” and a memorable role opposite Adam Sandler in “Billy Madison,” Downey has remained mostly behind the scenes, rarely granting interviews. Until now.

This year, Downey stepped into the spotlight as the subject of the Peacock documentary “Downey Wrote That,” in which people like Conan O’Brien, John Mulaney and Bill Hader praise him as one of the greatest comedians of all time. And Downey also had two acting roles, playing a jolly member of the Christmas Adventurers Club in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” and a bubble-blowing middle manager in Tim Robinson’s HBO series “The Chair Company.”
In a phone interview with Variety, while Downey is on vacation in Bermuda, he’s joyously long-winded and generous with his time. When I suggest a word-association game, instructing Downey to provide just one- or two-word answers, he can’t help himself, gushing for minutes on end about his friends and collaborators. While our conversation was initially slotted for 20 minutes, it runs over an hour, with Downey thwarting multiple attempts to set him free. “Go ahead, I’ll take all the questions you have,” he says when I try to wrap at the 45-minute mark. And, 20 minutes later, when I thank him for “going long,” he corrects me: “No, this has not been a long interview. Keep going.”

You famously shared an office at “SNL” with Bill Murray. Is there something about the lack of sleep and personal space that breeds comedic creativity?

I do think it breaks down some barriers. It makes it easier to try something you might be afraid to work up in private and hand in to somebody. The way I write is I work it out on my feet — talking it down, pitching it to people, and changing it as I go. By the time I write a script, it’s really just a record of something that’s already been worked out. I don’t find it on paper; I find it in conversation. The lack of sleep definitely affected the writing and performing in all kinds of ways. It made the whole thing feel more heroic.

You say in the documentary that you were once the youngest writer on “SNL” and once the oldest. What was the biggest change in the show between those years?

In the beginning, almost everything we did — whether it was truly new or not — felt new. It was like walking into a virgin forest and cutting down 200-foot trees. There was so much uncharted territory. But 40 or 45 years later, a lot of that ground has been covered. That’s one of the reasons I have so much respect for the last group I knew well — Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis, Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig, Amy Poehler, Will Forte, Kenan Thompson and that whole crew.

Comedy had evolved by their time. They could do certain things we couldn’t have done in the ’70s or ’80s, simply because audiences were more innocent back then. There were sketches we did in those early years that wouldn’t even make it out of a read-through today. Sensibilities have changed — tightened, in some ways. You can say audiences have become too politically correct or too sensitive, but arguing about it doesn’t really help. What matters is not just what people find funny, but what they’re comfortable being seen laughing at. In a live audience, that’s a big factor.

You helped put together the “In Memoriam” segment on “SNL50,” which honored the characters and sketches that haven’t aged well.

It started as a tribute to the writers and performers we’d lost, but it became something else. It became about all the material we could no longer do. Things that had to be retired forever. Some of it was borderline offensive, but in a comedy-offensive way. And some of it — well, it just wouldn’t work anymore, because it would genuinely upset people. So in a strange way, I think we actually had a little more artistic freedom in the ’70s and ’80s. Maybe less conceptual freedom, but more freedom to take risks. Comedy keeps evolving, though — hopefully expanding, getting smarter, reaching new places.

What was it like coming back for “SNL50”?

I spent most of my time working with Bill Murray on something for the Radio City Music Hall show, which was on Friday. The anniversary show was Sunday. Coming back after all that time was strange. I’d retired in 2013, so it had been 12 years since I’d been in that kind of setting. To be honest, it was a little frustrating. The Radio City work took up so much of the weekend that I missed seeing some old friends. I caught up with a few people but completely missed others. The big after-party went on all night. There were something like 1,100 people there. And it actually left me kind of sad and emotional. I realized there’s never going to be another one of those, and for some people I saw, that was probably the last time I will see them. So it wasn’t quite the pure fun I’d hoped it would be.

From a viewer’s perspective, it did feel like a culmination, even though the show is, of course, continuing.

It’s funny you say that. The feeling I had at the 50th anniversary was very similar to the feeling I had in May of 1980 [when most of the cast and crew, including Lorne Michaels, left “SNL”]. We thought of that as the last season. I remember being very emotional.

I’d like to play a word association game, if you’re up for it. I’ll give you a name, and you say the first thing that comes to mind.

OK.

Adam Sandler.

This isn’t a word, but he was our version of Jerry Lewis. He was wild and unpredictable, not to everyone’s taste, but an incredible combination of real brilliance and occasional goofy, low-brow-ness. 

Norm Macdonald.

The person whose sense of humor was closest to my own. Incredibly principled and fearless. He did like to make people laugh — he lived for that — but he had really high standards about ways of getting to that.

David Letterman.

He was willing to do things that he knew wouldn’t get huge laughs, but he loved them. I always think about how much he paid attention to language. He had this very Midwestern fondness for odd turns of phrase. [When I was head writer on “Late Night,”] we once did a bit where we had this weeklong project upgrading his desk, adding little features. The NBC crew guy was there with a power drill, and Dave said, “My dream is for ‘Late Night’ to get its own three-speed drill — and someday, God willing, a variable-speed drill.” I remember thinking, nobody in the history of comedy is ever going to get a laugh out of “variable-speed drill.” But that’s what I loved about Letterman. It was about the language. And he was the king of dry.

Lorne Michaels.

Indispensable. He protected and encouraged writers and performers, but, importantly, he didn’t protect the performers more than the writers. Nobody protected writers like this guy. He’d go to bat for us when the network tried to screw us. Lorne fought for us, and he had the clout to actually solve problems. He was brilliant at negotiating with the network. He was very smooth—I don’t want to say “slick,” but he could be extremely charming.

The only time he ever really ran into trouble was during the [NBC executive] Don Ohlmeyer years. Ohlmeyer’s secret weapon was that he didn’t get Lorne’s jokes. The kind of things that had always worked for Lorne — his wit, his charm — just didn’t land. Most network executives are at least somewhat sophisticated and have a decent sense of humor. Ohlmeyer wasn’t. He was kind of a thug, immune to Lorne’s charm.

What will happen to “SNL” after Lorne retires?

If Lorne ever leaves the show, I can’t imagine anyone replacing him. I haven’t met a person who could do everything he does. There are people who might have the comedic stature to keep the network and the critics at bay, but no one who can do it all. He’s indispensable.

Tina Fey and Seth Meyers are the names that get brought up.

Those are the two I was thinking of. I just worry that no one has the mystique Lorne has. They maybe have their own kind of mystique, but it’d be rough. I think it was Gilbert Gottfried who once said “SNL” is beyond good or bad, that it’s a restaurant in a good location. But people need to remember that Lorne made it a good location. It was a shitty location — a derelict neighborhood, metaphorically speaking. In the 1970s, there was nothing. They were showing Johnny Carson repeats or something. No one watched television on Saturday night, much less at that time. Half the country was in bed by the time our show came on — probably more than half. And yet, within a year, people were interrupting parties saying, “Hey everybody, it’s 11:30!” and everyone would crowd around the TV. That had never happened before. I’m sure it stopped happening a long time ago, but at the time it was extraordinary.

In the ’70s, brunch was a big thing. After the show, we’d have an after-party, and sometimes an after-after party. We’d get home around 5 a.m., wake up around noon, and crawl out to some restaurant for an omelet and a Bloody Mary. If you went to the bathroom and walked past the other tables, you’d hear people reciting sketches from the night before. Sometimes you’d want to correct them and say, “Excuse me, it was Land Shark, not…” whatever it was. I wish I’d been older, more experienced, to appreciate it fully. It’s a very heady thing to have as your first grown-up job.

You finally left “SNL” in 2013, two years before the rise of Donald Trump as a major political figure. Were you sitting on the sidelines saying, “Put me in coach!”?

He was already a comic figure to us 30 years before he announced for president. I remember writing a Trump piece in 1984 or ’85, and then another one around ’87 that was a kind of “Gift of the Magi” sketch. In it, Donald and Ivana Trump had given each other these profane, tasteless gifts — Trump bought the doors of the Sistine Chapel for the garage at Mar-a-Lago, and Ivana had ruined some sacred piece of art for a cheesy decoration. He always seemed like this beat-up, ridiculous character. I never had a great, fresh take on him.

I do think it’s important to make fun of people, but to try to keep your own animus out of it — not out of fairness or respect for the MAGA audience, but because anger just makes the comedy less funny. Stridency makes it harder for me. Maybe others would disagree, but I was sick of him before he even ran for president. If I were still there, having to deal with him every week, I’d go crazy. I love James Austin Johnson’s impression. The way he plays Trump, with these insane mind excursions and wandering all over the place — is exactly right, and those pieces are really well written.

Every once in a while, I’ll have an idea. I don’t try to think of them, but something may pop into my head while I’m driving, and some of those ideas are so perishable they’d only work that week. Sometimes I’ll call into “SNL” and say, “Hey, I’ve got something if you want it.”

Do you have an example?

During his first term, Trump kept bragging about having the lowest Black unemployment rate in U.S. history, and I gave Michael Che an “Update” joke that went, “I’m pretty sure during slavery times it was zero.”

Is there a politician you wish you could have satirized more?

I really wanted to write Al Gore for eight years. I thought he was such a strange, interesting character, and a fun person for Darrell Hammond to play. A lot of my friends said, “Oh, you lucked out — Bush is going to be so much easier to write than Gore.” And I totally disagreed. I thought Gore would’ve been much more fun. Bush fit too easily into that “dumb hick” stereotype, and that’s mostly how he was portrayed. Gore, to me, was weirder, more nuanced, and more interesting.

You’ve often described your political comedy as apolitical. What do you make of the Trump administration attempting to infuse comedy into their rhetoric? The DHS recently quoted your monologue from “Billy Madison” in a social media post defending ICE.

It’s shockingly informal. I don’t quite know what to make of it. I guess there’s nothing I can do about it legally. Trump’s tweets are just kind of semi-literate, but Vance can actually bite. I want the government to have a sense of decorum. You can be funny and dignified, but that was… I was shocked.

What is your take on breaking? It seems to be more embraced these days at “SNL” than in the past.

I was never a fan. You have to earn the right to break. And you earn it by having a long track record of committing to the material, playing it straight, and not breaking. Then, every once in a while, you’re allowed. I never objected when John Mulaney would give Bill Hader Stefon jokes he’d never seen before on-air, and Hader would fight like hell not to break. That, to me, is fine. Phil Hartman, for instance, may have been in more sketches than any cast member in history, and he broke exactly once, in a piece Jack Handey and I wrote. The set started to collapse around him. All hell broke loose. Everyone else in the cast was breaking, and Phil held out for as long as he could, but eventually he lost it. Then you had guys like Horatio Sanz, who I don’t recall ever not breaking. It always seemed cheap to me. 

Norm hated it. He thought it was an easy laugh. He used to say comedy is like Russian slaw: the cheap stuff can drive the good stuff out of circulation, because it’s easier to make. He used to say his least favorite audience members were the ones who laughed and said, “Oh, that’s cute.” It’s too cute. Too cloying. So, put me down as a hard no on breaking.

Your Jeffrey Epstein bit on Conan O’Brien’s podcast became an internet phenomenon. Was that spontaneous, or was Conan aware you were going to do that bit on the show?

No, it unfolded in a completely organic way, moment to moment. The night before I did the show, I was talking to Paula Davis, one of Conan’s producers, and she said to me, “You just need to have an ‘I am blank to be Conan’s friend’ thing ready.” I called her back and said, “Has anyone done “I am entirely unashamed”? Then, driving over to the studio, I realized I needed to think of something to justify it — it was kind of a tail-wagging-the-dog situation. I don’t think I told them I was going to say “Jeffrey Epstein,” but I didn’t really know what I was going to do beyond that.

There were also things we talked about but never got to, which is why I’m supposed to go back and do Conan’s podcast again, probably in the next couple of months. We were going to talk about Norm Macdonald — that was something we never got to. We spent so much time on the Epstein stuff. We might even return to Epstein, just for fun. It was wild, though, the way that bit had legs.

You played a member of an exclusive white supremacist group in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another.” When reading the script, did you anticipate how funny the film would play on screen? 

I thought that character was funny, but I also wanted to play it straight. On set, Paul doesn’t rehearse a lot with the actors. He tends to trust you, like, “You know what I want, right?” Then he’ll fine-tune it. We ran through it a few times, and he asked me to try a few different things, but basically, I just wanted to make him happy. I’m a huge fan of Paul and his work, so my attitude was: as long as you’re sure I’m not going to ruin your movie, I’m thrilled to be here. I’ll give you whatever I’m capable of giving.

Did you improvise at all?

We all played around. “Semon demon” was in the script. Some of the other lines Paul said we could take in different directions. But, no, I wasn’t out there winging it. I’ve written for other people for so many years, and I know how much it means when a performer really tries to do something the way you wrote it — the way you intended and imagined it. There’s always room for surprise, but I don’t have any ego about being a performer. I just go, “Here’s what you like,” and when I’d see Paul smiling behind the camera, I figured I was doing it right.

Aside from calling into “SNL” every once in a while, what do you do with your ideas? Are you writing something? Are you trying to act more?

I have outside interests, personal things. What a lot people like me do now is send goofy emails or texts to old friends, often other writers. I’m constantly texting back and forth with George Meyer, who wrote for “The Simpsons” and worked with me at “Letterman” 45 years ago. Jack Handey, another great writer, and I have had this running joke for more than 40 years where we write each other emails or call each other as attorneys threatening to sue one another. It involves this mix of performance and writing — we create these fake legal documents and send them back and forth. It actually takes up a fair amount of time. Sometimes Jack will call, and when I see his name on the caller ID, I won’t pick up because I can’t think of anything to say as my angry attorney character screaming at him. So a lot of my comedy energy gets burned up in those ways.

Somewhere in my texts and old notebooks, there are things I’d like to pursue at some point. I may do a guest writing week at “SNL” again — I could walk in with a couple of sketches I’ve already thought about, just because I’d like to see them done. I think Lorne vaguely doesn’t trust that someone my age could write something that appeals to an 18-year-old audience — and he may well be right. He trusts me if I’m writing something political, because that’s more grown-up stuff anyway. But I still have sketch ideas I’ve always wanted to try.

Like what?

One was an instructional video about texting while driving responsibly. It would just be explaining that there’s a right way to text while driving and a wrong way, and we’re here to show you. That’s probably something that would run into standards issues, by the way.

Really?

Yes, because it’s taking a lighthearted approach to a serious problem. Back in the ’70s, our standards battles were more like, “You can’t say ‘pussy,’ it’s a dirty word.” Then later there was one where you couldn’t say “bastard” — not because it was considered a dirty word anymore, but because it might be offensive to children whose parents weren’t married. So the reasoning changed. And now, you’re more likely to run into notes that say, “There’s nothing funny about X.”

But isn’t that the point of comedy? To find the funny in things that aren’t funny?

There’s always a degree-of-difficulty factor in comedy. That was something Norm and I were really in sync about. There are certain things you know are going to get a laugh. You don’t need to be proud of it. It’s like this: if you can get a 13-year-old kid to enjoy sea urchin sashimi, that’s a real fucking achievement. Getting him to like banana cream pie is not. You don’t say, “Did you see that? He ate it right up!” Yeah, of course he did — it’s fucking banana cream pie.

Our favorite “Update” jokes made the audience go: “Oh, you fuckers. I disapprove of what you’re doing, but I have to admit it’s funny. I can’t help it.” That’s very different from the reaction: “What you did isn’t really funny, but I agree with your political stance, so I’m going to applaud anyway.” We always preferred the jokes that made people feel a little bad for laughing, not because they were cruel or dirty or juvenile, but because they pushed against comfort a bit. A lot of our O.J. Simpson jokes fell into that category. At a certain point, the relentlessness itself became part of the joke — the fact that we just refused to stop doing them.

I agree that comedy should be challenging. What I hate is pandering. I think most of us do. You still see a little of it on the show sometimes, but for the most part, the show’s done a pretty good job of keeping its standards — trying to do things the right way, not taking shortcuts, not getting too corny, lazy, sappy, or warm and cuddly.

This interview has been edited and condensed.