How John Mulaney Made Bill Hader Break During Every Stefon Appearance On SNL
During his long tenure at the hit sketch comedy show "Saturday Night Live," John Mulaney was responsible for a lot of laughs — some for the audience, and some for his fellow creatives. As a writer working behind the scenes, he created some of the most memorable characters and jokes in the series' decades-long run, including the beloved Stefon, played by Bill Hader. Hader was known for laughing a lot on the air, which was typically frowned upon. In Hader's case, however, he earned a lot of affection from the audience for his gaffs. The comedian always tried hard not to break character, but Mulaney would not make it easy for him. In fact, the comedy writer would often purposefully try to make Hader chuckle while he was onscreen.
Hader and Mulaney created the character of Stefon together in the "SNL" writers' room with a few key references in mind. The character was "based on a barista in Chelsea, who actually turned out to be friends with [fellow "SNL" alum] Kate McKinnon after the fact, which was funny," Hader revealed to GQ in 2018. "He didn't talk like that or really dress like that, it was just this attitude he had. And then John Mulaney had a character he would kind of do the voice of, and we just brought them together."
Surprisingly, Stefon wasn't so well-received at first. It wasn't until the character earned a segment on the show's news portion, Weekend Update, that they got the formula down.
"We tried the character of Stefon a couple of times in a sketch where Stefon was trying to open various businesses or pitch a movie," Mulaney recalled on a 2018 Behind the Sketch for "SNL." "Finally, we're asked by the head of Weekend Update to try it as an Update feature. And it was so weird that I just assumed it would be cut."
Mulaney wrote new jokes right before the show
Before Stefon even made it to air, Bill Hader had a hard time keeping it together while he was playing the character. "The first time we did it at dress [rehearsal], Bill started laughing a lot," John Mulaney recounted in the Behind the Sketch interview. "And then afterward he was apologizing because he has a strong work ethic and thinks it's bad to mess up, and I think it's very funny to mess up."
From then on, it became Mulaney's mission to make his collaborator laugh whenever possible. It was a pretty easy task — all he had to do was throw Hader a last-minute curveball. The comedian wasn't a big fan of filming live, and he tended to over-rehearse his lines. "I'm someone that goes over my lines kind of obsessively, I run 'em, run 'em constantly," Hader explained on "The Howard Stern Show" in 2013.
Mulaney took advantage of Hader's over-preparation by changing his lines last minute. Hader wasn't likely to laugh at the jokes he was familiar with, but the new ones could catch his funny bone by surprise. Sometimes he would write entirely new jokes on the cue cards held up for the actors behind the camera. One such joke caused Hader to break harder than he ever had before.
"The one that he really got me on that I did not know was up there was on Halloween," Hader told Stern. "So, they're flipping the cue cards, and then I'm expecting one joke, and it comes over and then in new, fresh writing on the cue card and it says 'Hey Seth, you know how Blackula's the Black Dracula?' and he goes 'Yes,' and I go, well they made a Jewish one, you know what Jewish Dracula's called? And it says 'Sidney Applebaum.'"
Hader heard them for the first time seconds before air
John Mulaney wanted Bill Hader to break despite the Stefon actor's best efforts to hold it together, but he didn't want his friend to stumble over the new jokes. To give him a moment to prepare — and only a moment — the comedian would often tell Hader what the new jokes would be just seconds before he stepped in front of the cameras.
"Well, just so that he wouldn't trip up over the wording, 'cause if you read a cue card, you might not understand it, but I'll go up to him and I'll be like 'There's a new club owner, and it's Baloney Danza,' and then he walks right out to the jazz," Mulaney explained to "Conan on TBS" in 2012. "So I think in the fall we did one and I put in a shaved lion that looks like Mario Batali, that was added for air. I put in two Spud Webbs, one Spud Webb was at one club, and then Spud Webb as at another club later."
Even when Mulaney didn't have an entirely new joke to add to the sketch, he still found a way to throw Hader off his game. Right before filming a bit mentioning actor-comedian Taylor Negron, the mischievous writer handed Hader a printed photo of Negron and signed it, "'To Bill, thank you for never making fun of me on Weekend Update.'"
Hader later revived his role when he hosted the show in 2018, but this time, he was joined by Mulaney onstage. The writer appeared on the show as Shy, Stefon's lawyer-slash-"conceptual piss artist." He couldn't miss another opportunity to make Hader break on the air, even if he wasn't writing the sketch himself.
"He whispered in my ear to make me laugh," Hader said on "Late Night with Seth Meyers" in 2018 after he hosted. "He goes, 'My girlfriend works at Yoshinoya Beef Bowl.'"
The Barry star gained a reputation for breaking
But Stefon wasn't the only sketch that made Bill Hader laugh on air. His co-star Fred Armisen also had a habit of cracking Hader up during their running gag The Californians as well as one-off sketches like Short Term Memory Theater, a sketch about actors with short-term memory loss that can't remember their lines. In the sketch, Hader plays a doctor that claims to have cured the actors by blatantly feeding them their lines.
"So Fred on air without telling me, he came out in this big giant jacket," Hader told Howard Stern in 2013. "And then forever just didn't know where to put it. And you see me go, 'Gimme the jacket, c'mon, gimme the jacket.' And there's no acting in it. There's like a 30-second span where it's nothing that's on the cue cards, it's just me and Fred interacting with each other [...] And we start breaking, we start laughing."
Hader eventually became known for breaking during sketches on "SNL," and the audience loved him for it. It was hard for Hader to keep it together when he was joking around with his friends, but it was never his intention to laugh. As soon as he walked offstage, the comedian would often get angry at himself for breaking. Luckily, the series creator Lorne Michaels was much easier on Hader than the actor was on himself.
Hader hated laughing on air, but everyone else loved it
"So after that sketch [with Fred Armisen] I went to Lorne [Michaels] and I said 'Hey, I'm breaking a lot now. Is this getting ridiculous? I'm sorry,'" Bill Hader told Howard Stern. "Because I legitimately feel awful after that happens. If you saw me after every Stefon I'm going like, 'F***, goddamnit.' I get very mad. And he was like 'If what you're saying is not funny, then I would get mad. But what you're saying — especially Stefon — it's ridiculously funny. So don't worry about it so much, and you guys are having a good time out there, and I wouldn't be able to keep a straight face with Fred coming out there in the jacket, so ..."
The "Barry" series creator and star might have hated it when he wasn't able to hold it together, but the audience loved to watch him fall apart at the seams. He became a surrogate for the audience, showing them just how funny the sketch was in real-time. Sometimes it kills the comedic timing when someone laughs their way through a joke, but in Hader's case, it only added another layer of humor to some already hilarious moments. Breaking was such a big part of Hader's presence on "SNL," especially as Stefon, that his hands covering his mouth became a staple of the character. If he wasn't giggling behind his ringed fingers, he simply wouldn't be Stefon.