Liz Patrick Reveals What a Week in the Life of an SNL Director is Like, the Steve Martin/Martin Short Sketch that Got Cut

Emmy nominee Liz Patrick talks to Awards Daily about directing two comedy legends in Saturday Night Live’s Season 48 holiday episode.

Director Liz Patrick says that like New York City during the holiday season, there’s something special about a Saturday Night Live holiday episode.

“The set is decorated, there are pretty bumper shots,” says Patrick. “The energy is heightened, like New York in general during the holidays. Plus, having hosts like Steve Martin and Martin Short and Brandi Carlisle on the show [as musical guest]. What a great episode.”

As both Martin and Short mentioned in their monologue during the December 10, 2022 episode, they’ve hosted SNL plenty of times before (Martin 16 versus Short’s 3), and Patrick let them play out that comfortability on screen, especially in the eulogies they recited to each other.

“They were always like, ‘Liz, if you want something different, let us know.’ They’re comedy legends. They’re some of my heroes. If they were two newbies, yes, a little more work would go into it. But with two pros like that, you just naturally see where it goes and add to it.”

Short even brought out a bit of his Ed Grimley dance in the Minky Carmichael sketch.

“My question was, ‘What’s the best way to cover [the dance]? I think we went a lot to the two-shot to see both he and Heidi [Gardner] dancing. Everyone plays off of each other so well.”

Patrick says Wednesdays are when she starts reading everything for the episode.

“I literally start writing down how I would shoot it, where I would shoot it, as I’m reading through each [sketch], and there are anywhere from 30 to 50 that we read. I’ve got to take quick notes. Sometimes during the read-through, I’ll see different ways they perform it, and be like, we can do this or that, or we definitely need to make this an entrance if we can.”

At the end of the read-through, executive producer Lorne Michaels selects what’s moving forward, and the other producers and writers also weigh in, as well as the host.

“The supervising producer and I talk through whether we can fit everything on stage, because sometimes there might be three or four sketches that read as giant sketches, so we have to figure out which ones we’re scaling back. It’s figuring out that magic.”

Weekend Update is usually one of the last things the cast rehearses before dress rehearsal on Saturday.

“The cast is the ones that are writing it, and it’s following them and adding something to it. It’s not technically as difficult unless we do something like when Sarah Sherman walked to Colin’s [Jost] dressing room.”

As director, Patrick has to anticipate how the live audience might influence the hosts and the cast.

“Both Steve Martin and Martin Short have a tendency to do a little improv and feel the audience, so it was trying to feel them a little bit and not cut away. It was feeling their rhythm—and everyone’s going to have a different rhythm. The audience is going to react differently, so it’s trying to gauge all of that. Sometimes it’s your own reaction to it as well. I’m hopefully in the moment with the audience, but also paying attention to what we have to do!”

The Father of the Bride sketch toward the end of the episode presented a challenge with the number of moving vignettes—and cameos, like a certain Succession star.

“The writers and the talent department start reaching out to people to see who’s available for cameos. I’m not sure how Kieran [Culkin] got into that one, but I knew Selena [Gomez] was going to be there for the monologue so they would try to squeeze her in. That was a fun challenging sketch because it was just little vignettes. It was supposed to be a movie trailer. I believe they killed one of the vignettes, so we had to get everyone to the next mark and reset in 5 to 10 seconds. There was one where not everyone got to the mark they were supposed to go to, and I was like, ‘I hope this works!'”

Like with every episode, some sketches were cut, including one involving Heidi Gardner and Martin Short getting especially excited for the holiday season.

“They were walking through a holiday market and every time they’d come to a new item, they’d get aroused. It was challenging, and Heidi had a special bra, and Martin had a device underneath as well. It was a challenge to cut away and not see the special effects team go in there and operate. It was fun!”

The Saturday Night Live episode featuring Steve Martin and Martin Short is streaming on Peacock.