Ego Nwodim (‘Saturday Night Live’) reflects on her strongest, funniest season yet: ‘I was allowed to soar’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
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After originally joining “Saturday Night Live” in 2018, the most recent 2022-23 season was arguably Ego Nwodim‘s strongest and funniest yet. “It’s illegal how much fun I got to have, and it was so cool to finally have some space,” she reveals about the 48th season of NBC’s sketch comedy series, which ended a month earlier than expected due to the writers’ strike. Watch our exclusive video interview above.
During her first few years at “SNL,” “There were a lot of people ahead of me in line, if you will, who had been around for some time and had paid their dues at the show, and it was their time to shine and play,” Nwodim tells me. But with so many cast departures ahead of Season 48, “It felt like there was room to really breathe and explore and play and bop around and work with different writers in a way that I hadn’t been able to before.” She sums it all up by proclaiming, “I felt like I was allowed to soar this season.”
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Perhaps Nwodim’s most popular character of all time, Lisa from Temecula, was introduced this year to great fanfare. Lisa shocks her sister’s friends at dinner with her obsession over “extra, extra well-done” steak. Soon the entire table is shaking under the force of her knife and fork, and the cast completely cracks up, “Debbie Downer”-style. The character returns later in the season for a new sketch in which she tosses a salad and once again disrupts the dinner.
“I mean, Marcus, I was not anticipating that,” Nwodim readily admits about Lisa from Temecula going viral. “Surprises can be good sometimes, and so that was a surprise. I got to have so much fun playing the character.” She laughs, “I get people yelling ‘Cook my meat!’ at me on the street, which normally makes me go, ‘Excuse me?’ but you know, it’s Lisa. It’s so cool to see everyone enjoy this thing I enjoyed doing, and then to watch them interact and talk about how much they liked it. My mind is blown and I feel really fortunate.”
Another stand-out sketch for Nwodim this season was “Excorism,” in which she takes on the role of Mrs. Shaw, the assertive upstairs neighbor of a young girl (Jenna Ortega) who’s been possessed by a demon. “Can you believe the demon making noise when I’m trying to sleep?” the actress jokes before adding, “I just love an indignant, disruptive character.”
And of course, there was the “Black Ariel” moment at Weekend Update where she plays the timely character from the Disney live-action remake. “Some people are upset about the casting [of Halle Bailey], which is insane to me,” she recalls. “And I’m like, you’re all up in arms about this made-up character that can be played by anyone. Okay. What if we found out more about her backstory, and she is an anti-hero and she is a not a role model and your kids shouldn’t be looking up to her.”
Also in our exclusive video interview, Nwodim talks about how her confidence has grown over the past five years, what it’s like when newbies join the cast, why an Emmy nomination “would mean the world,” and how her future “dream hosts” are Jamie Foxx, Beyonce and Barack Obama & Michelle Obama.
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