Julia Sweeney on Breaking Character During Chris Farley's SNL Sketch: 'They Had to Cut Around Me'

Jodi Guglielmi
·2 min read
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Out of the countless Saturday Night Live sketches that Julia Sweeney starred in, there is still one that haunts her to this day.

Sweeney, who appeared on SNL from 1990-94, recalled breaking out into uncontrollable laughter during Chris Farley's iconic 1993 "Matt Foley: Van Down By the River" sketch, saying she still feels bad about it nearly three decades later.

"I break all the time and I hate it about myself," she said while speaking on a "Women of SNL" virtual panel, according to Entertainment Weekly. "I'm not laughing at me. I'm laughing at this person who's committing so much who's two feet away from me."

In the sketch, Sweeney and Phil Hartman play parents who enlist a struggling motivational speaker named Matt Foley to come in and set their kids (played by David Spade and Christina Applegate) straight. The skit was Farley's debut as the beloved character, who would go on to reappear several times throughout the actor's time on the show.

SNL/YouTube Julia Sweeney and Phil Hartman on SNL

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Sweeney, 61, said her laughter became so distracting that the cameramen had to purposely cut her out of the sketch at parts.

"They had to cut around me because I was laughing. Because it was like I had the best seat in the house for the funniest friggin' thing that was happening on the planet," said Sweeney. "[David] Spade was laughing too. But they were mad at me."

"They had to change camera angles and that's terrible," she added. "That is terrible. I just feel awful about it actually."

While the other members of the panel said that her laughter probably "added" to the comedy, Sweeney said she was still dissatisfied with her performance. "I don't want to be like that," she said.

Recalling the moment in the I Am Chris Farley documentary, Applegate said of the hilarious performance, “Out comes Chris out of that door. We all just kind of stopped: ‘What is going on?’ ”