The Rachel Dratch SNL Sketch That Had The Whole Cast Struggling To Contain Their Laughter
While the actors on "Saturday Night Live" are used to stifling giggles, even the most consummate professional occasionally has a sketch or line that gets under their skin, and they break character. One notable example is the Season 41, Episode 7 episode with Ryan Gosling, in which both Aidy Bryant and Ryan Gosling are trying to keep straight faces while Kate McKinnon talks about her encounter with aliens. As McKinnon talks about "40 gray aliens take turns gently batting my knockers around," Bryant tries to suppress her laughter, but when McKinnon says, "Look, it wasn't my worst Wednesday night," both Bryant and Gosling were shaking, trying to keep from giggling (per YouTube).
Another favorite "SNL" sketch involving the cast breaking character is Season 27, Episode 3 with Drew Barrymore, which Will Ferrell said was created for one reason. "The basic purpose of every time we did this sketch was to try to make Jimmy Fallon laugh, which is not hard to do," he told Entertainment Weekly. In the sketch, Ferrell and Rachel Dratch play a couple who encounter Fallon in a hot tub and begin telling him about their sexual exploits, before Barrymore also joins them. By the end of the sketch, all four of them had broken character (via YouTube).
Rachel Dratch was an "SNL" player from 1999 to 2006 (via IMDb) and was known for characters such as Virginia Klarvin, Denise McDenna, and Abe Scheinwald. But one sketch, in particular, had everyone struggling to keep from laughing.
The first Debbie Downer sketch had everyone breaking character
The very first appearance of Debbie Downer in 2004's Season 29, Episode 18 would become legendary as Rachel Dratch struggled to maintain her composure, and slowly host Lindsay Lohan and the rest of the cast succumbed to giggles and even all-out tears, as seen on YouTube. The sketch begins with Dratch, Lohan, Jimmy Fallon, Fred Armisen, Amy Poehler, and Horatio Sanz at Disney World, and after the server tells them about the steak and eggs, Debbie replies "Ever since they found mad cow disease in the U.S., I'm not taking any chances." After she begins talking about a train wreck, Dratch has trouble keeping from laughing and holding her deadpan expression and soon everyone is stifling laughs.
"I was on vacation and someone — like a stranger — said a real downer thing in the middle of this vacation. It was a stranger . . . so then it just sort of sat, and we had to rev things up again," Dratch told "Live with Kelly and Ryan" about where the idea had come from. After getting home after the vacation, she began to think more about the encounter, and she worked with "Saturday Night Live" writer Paula Pell on the character, and Debbie Downer was born. Debbie Downer would appear in many episodes of "SNL," with Rachel Dratch returning as recently as Season 45, Episode 15 to portray Debbie in a sketch with Daniel Craig (via Entertainment Weekly). With Dratch appearing more frequently in cameos the last five years, we hope to see Debbie Downer in the future.