SNL’s First Lady

Before Bowen or Kate, and before “Totino’s” or “Gays in Space,” there was Terry Sweeney. Back in SNL’s 11th season, during the height of the AIDS crisis, Sweeney was not only the first openly gay actor on the NBC show’s cast but the first openly gay person on network TV at all. It was a groundbreaking casting that SNL rarely crows about — no surprise given that he was fired after one season. It was Lorne Michaels’s first year back after a five-year hiatus that saw the creation and flopping of his new NBC show (called The New Show) and, on SNL’s side, multiple failed attempts at replacing Michaels.

While on the show, Sweeney did well. People called him “the one bright star of Saturday Night Live’s otherwise disappointing season,” and his impersonation of Nancy Reagan made her debut in the 1985 premiere opposite Madonna as Princess Diana and, later in the season, fell in love with her son Ron in a Back to the Future parody. It was a promising start, but then the season ended in a sketch with all of the show’s cast members caught in a fire, and by the start of season 12, Sweeney, among others, was gone.

In the years after, Sweeney could not get booked as an actor. Instead, he collaborated with his writing and life partner Lanier Laney — they co-wrote the southern cult classic Shag, iconic “Felicity” sketches on MADtv, and took Sweeney’s Nancy on the road as a one-person show called It’s Still My Turn. But, while recent years have seen a meteoric rise in queer comedy, Sweeney remains a swept-aside part of SNL history. Ahead of SNL’s 50th-anniversary special, Sweeney discussed his groundbreaking time on the show and decision to be out on television. “I really was gay out there and proud,” he says, looking back now. “It was the part I was supposed to play.”

Who were your earliest comedic inspirations?
I don’t think there is a comedian, especially in my age range, who wouldn’t say Carol Burnett. I loved The Jackie Gleason Show. In terms of sitcoms, I liked The Beverly Hillbillies and Bewitched. Endora was basically a drag queen, so everyone was fascinated by that. I saw some comics I thought were really funny: Phyllis Diller; George Carlin, who I later met and wrote a sketch for when he was on MADtv. It was a spoof of Touched by an Angel called “Touched by an Atheist.”

When you saw Paul Lynde or Charles Nelson Reilly growing up, did you see them as gay or like yourself?
I love Paul Lynde. I loved them. I’d go, “God, gay people are so funny.”

You knew they were gay?
Yeah. Although they never said it.

I’ve heard that Paul Lynde would get fan letters from women who were in love with him.
So did Liberace. In what world was that?

But you could recognize them?
Oh, yeah. The gaydar starts going, “Woo-woo-woo.” I was amazed that the women never went, “I wasted throwing my bra at Liberace.” Although maybe they didn’t, since he might wear it. But we were a small minority in the culture, so as a gay person, I was looking for every single clue.

When did you get a sense of what gay culture was?
The first sense of gay culture is when I got to a primary school and I heard someone scream, “Let’s get ’em!” That was my first time going, I must be different. I should have gone out for track, I spent so much time running. People would kick my books, shove me in the lockers. I was one of those gay people. They may not have known Liberace was gay, but they certainly knew I was. If I had my bag for school, they’d go, “Oh, fag bag.” “Terry rhymes with fairy, Sweeney rhymes with weenie.”

I have “Jason,” which very easily became — 
Gayson! They’re not that smart, but they think of things like that. But my thought was, What is their problem? I never went, What is my problem? Much healthier! Other gay people, later on, would jump out a window. I thought, Oh, no, I’ll push you out. I’m not going!

Then I got to college, and everything was kind of fluid. People weren’t openly hostile to me, but you’re cautious. And then there was somebody who was the counselor for my floor of the dorm, and he wanted to have sex with me. I thought, Well, that’s nice. Thank you for the guiding hand, which was going up in my shorts.

Was The Boys in the Band out yet?
Boys in the Band was right before that. What a horror show! That scared the shit out of me, all those mean mind games. I was like, What is this, my future? And Cruising! That’s worse! That’s the kind of orientation you got: If you’re imagining what’s bad now, wait until you get out there on that scary dark end of the pier. Who knows if you live or die?

For my junior year, I went to Spain and to a bar called Los Stones. Guys would sit in each other’s laps and kiss. So after I graduated from college in 1973, I went into disco. I danced my tushy off at Studio 54, which I got into all the time because I happened to look exactly like David Kennedy. He was a junkie that went through all the time, but every time I went, I thought, Why do people say it’s so hard to get in there? I was the wrong person! I was at Liza’s birthday party!

Was that your first interaction with drag?
Unless you count Carol Burnett — Harvey Korman loved to get dressed up. But yes, there were a lot of drag queens around at that time. I met a few Village People. I actually spent a night with the Indian. Now they’re straight, apparently. I would see drag, and I loved it. I thought it was so exciting and fun, and a little scary sometimes.

How did you get started in comedy?
I started at Catch a Rising Star and other little places. I was making up a comedy act. I did “Cabfinger,” about being addicted to cabs — at that time, the subway was horrifying. I was trying out stand-up in little places, but to very straight audiences.

When you were performing for straight audiences, were you trying to act butch?
I was always myself. I never butched it up. In New York, the whole cabaret scene and the tiny club scene were full of gay people. But the actual stand-up world, I thought, Hmmm, that’s going to be a long haul. I was more comfortable doing performance art and improv.

When you did perform for straight audiences, how did they receive you?
I never had anybody yell “faggot” or boo. People have always liked me well enough onstage. It was more that I had to work as a waiter half the time.

You wrote on SNL during season six, during Lorne Michaels’s hiatus, when Jean Doumanian was in charge. How did you get hired?
I got hired because a friend told me, “I am auditioning for Saturday Night Live today.” I said, “Maybe I should apply.” He goes, “Don’t bother. It’s the last day.” So I went home, I locked myself in my apartment, and I wrote 20 sketches. I must’ve had about ten pots of coffee. The next day, I went to 30 Rock, and there were two giant security guards checking everybody’s ID. To the right of me was a deli. I went into the deli and ordered sandwiches, coleslaw, potato salad, and drinks. I went up to the security guard, and I went, “Lunch for Saturday Night Live!” He goes, “I’m not bringing lunch up. Do your job, for God’s sake.” I said, “Oh, sorry. It’s my first day.”

I went up, and everybody was waving me in. I knocked on Jean Doumanian’s door, and she said, “I didn’t order any lunch, honey.” I said, “I know, I’m a writer. I’ve written all these sketches. Please read them.” And I ran out. For two weeks, I heard nothing. Then Jean Doumanian called me up and said, “Hi, did you write all those 20 sketches?” And I said, “Yes.” And she said, “What do you do?” I said, “I’m a waiter.” And she said, “Starting Monday, you’re a writer on Saturday Night Live.” I was hired just like that. No agent, no connections, just that trick off the street, and I got hired.

How was writing for that season?
Eddie Murphy was in it, and anything you gave to Eddie, he turned into gold. Gilbert Gottfried was a very brilliant but odd person. You almost thought, Is he mentally ill? But then it worked out for him; he had to find his own way. Jean Doumanian kept going, “I think I need to put you on the show.” She was studying me, but then they fired her. It was a whole big deal.

How did you meet your husband, Lanier?
We met in ’82. I was performing stand-up and performance art, and he was too. We kind of met through friends who were all performers at that time in New York. You just floated around doing everything — improv, performance, art, blah, blah, blah. Then, I joined his group, the Whitlach Family, as a Christian song stylist named Kitty Kincaid. They would spot me in the audience and say, “Oh, look, it’s Kitty Kincaid!” I’d bow and everybody would applaud, and then I’d sing “Whatever Jesus Wants, Jesus Gets” and terrorize the straight men in the audience.

Did you consider that drag? 
I’ve always thought of myself as a character actress, because I wasn’t doing glamour. I was not like, Oh, I’m going to perform in drag. I never thought about it like that.

Can you tell me the story of getting cast on SNL?
It started with my husband’s cabaret act, Banned in France, which I joined in ’83. There were about five of us: me, Lanier, Carey Cromelin, Ginger Donelson, and Walter Thomas. We did crazy stuff. We had very lifelike dolls, and we pretended we were a circus family that used our own babies in the act. We would blindfold ourselves and have a gun and shoot them, and they’d be on roulette wheel going around. We could toss them.

But then we started getting booked. I was in the group for six months, and then I got a great review in the New York Times that compared me to Lily Tomlin, for my character Connie Chutzpah. I grew up on Long Island and all my friends were Jewish, and I based her on all my friends’ Jewish mothers. Then, talent agents came down to see me, and that’s the first time that they said, “Come in, we want you to audition for The New Show.”

At that time, I’d given up my apartment. I was trying to figure out whether I was going to live here in New York or L.A. After the audition, I slept on the floor of my friend Doug McGrath’s apartment in New York waiting to hear for six weeks, because it was one of those “You’re going to hear any week or any minute” things. And then that fell apart.  They said, “We’re only going to use stars.” And I didn’t have money from that show, since I hadn’t gotten a paycheck. So I went to L.A. Then, my husband reads in The Hollywood Reporter that Lorne is in town, and he’s looking for people for SNL. I went to a florist and got flowers that had already died, and I put a bow and a card on them. I wrote “Lorne, I bought these flowers. I know you’re in L.A. looking for Saturday Night Live talent. Remember me? I went to the expense of getting you flowers and delivering them, including a cab to come here to take them. If you do not pick me, I would expect to be reimbursed for these. Have a nice day.” And I signed it “Connie Chutzpah.” I was the first person he hired for season 11.

Did you ever play Connie on the show?
I could not get Connie on that show. They did not like her. The writers were not happy about me doing drag. They would sit there at read-throughs and just not laugh.

They would intentionally do that?
Oh, yes. I mean, that’s part of it. You want your sketch to get on. You may deliberately not laugh at somebody else’s sketch because you want yours to be funniest. It’s not one big happy family. It’s very competitive. I wasn’t used to that, because when I’d work with Lanier and my friends, we were all laughing, but once you get to the actual writers’ room, it was cutthroat.

What was it like being the first openly gay person on TV within the ecosystem of the show?
I had to deal with white-collar homophobia. Educated boys. Nobody went by my office and yelled, “Fag!” Instead, it was, “I don’t really have any ideas for you. We need a mailman in the sketch; we don’t need a gay mailman.” Randy Quaid was in the cast, and we would get to the read-throughs, and he would have a huge stack of scripts. I would have two or three sketches. They just didn’t write for me.

You had to write everything for yourself?
Lorne told me, “Look, I’m hiring your husband, because no one’s going to write for you.”

And if you went over and said, “Hey, do you want to work on this with me?,” what would they say?
“I’m working on something.” That’s it. Carol Leifer was the only one who’d write for me. And Al Franken didn’t have any problems. I hadn’t felt that way since junior high school.

Then in the background is that, when I was on SNL, I lost 13 friends during that season to AIDS. Thirteen! I went to memorials, burials, funerals. And then I went into work, and I was supposed to be funny, and nobody was writing for me. It was very, very tough. I was emotional during that time. There was a lot of death around the gay community, and no one was talking about it. I was in this parallel universe where I was mourning people’s lives and my friends. I’m supposed to come in, and here’s people not wanting to write a fucking sketch for me. I was like, Fuck you. I was angry.

But you could have been like Liberace or Lynde and just not acknowledged it.
Yeah, no one would’ve said anything. I might have gotten bras and girdles thrown at me.

Was the choice not to pretend to be straight a form of activism?
My friends were beautiful, and then they were haggard in about three or five months. And at that time, it was, “They brought it on themselves because they’re all sex maniacs.” I couldn’t lie — I would add to the shame. Years later, who’s going to remember the sketches you’re in? But they’ll remember that you said “I’m gay” when it was a time when you weren’t supposed to say that ever. And nobody had ever said it before without shame.

You act like it was obvious, but nobody else was making that choice.
Nobody. I even had a gay “friend” who said to me, “You’re so brave. I could never throw away my career like that.” I never saw him again. He’s still performing; he never made it. But that was the feeling: You want to do this? Go ahead, shoot yourself in the foot. After season 11, I was fired, and I didn’t work as an actor for ten years. All of the work for gays was “We’re going to cover AIDS and put you as a dying person in a hospital.” The next time I was hired to actually do comedy was Seinfeld. Back to the top!

Those boys had never seen drag. You’re the first lady in drag. Danitra Vance, who was the Black woman hired, was a lesbian, but she was in the closet. She said, “Terry, honey, I’m Black. I’m from the projects. I’m a woman. I’m not going to add ‘lesbian’ on top of that.” We would console each other and laugh about stuff, but it was tough.

How was it when Chevy Chase hosted? 
He fought with everybody. We’ve all had a Chevy experience. Do you know what I mean? I walked out of the room.

What specifically made you walk out?
I was very excited to meet him. It was the first time I met an old cast member. Then, he asked who the “gay one” was, and I put my hand up. He said, “I’ve got an idea for a sketch. We say you have AIDS and start weighing you throughout the show, and you keep losing weight.” The whole room was aghast. And so I just got up and walked out.

But you sound so kumbaya about it now. I don’t understand how you got there.
It was 1985! I am kumbaya about it. I moved on, because that’s his mental problem. It had nothing to do with me. It was embarrassing. Lorne made him come and apologize to me. Then, when he showed up, he goes, “If I said anything to hurt your feelings, I guess I’m sorry.” It was the kind of apology that women hate that men make. It’s almost a joke, it’s such a cliché.

Last year, we did those cover shoots with SNL alums, and you two were at the same one. What was that shoot like?
I thought it was going to be terrible if I ran into him. I went, What am I doing at the same shoot as him? But you know what? He’s much older and teeter-tottery. Someone was helping him get into the shoot, so I think he had some health challenges. I walked past him and he didn’t recognize me. I never spoke to him once.

We don’t know much about Danitra. What was she like?
Danitra was the sweetest, smartest, kindest person. Lovely. She was my one real friend in the cast. She would have her little tiny pile of sketches that she wrote too.

She would have to write everything for herself as well?
Yeah. Somebody might have occasionally written for her, but they mostly went, “I don’t know what to write for Black women.” If you look at the history of Saturday Night Live, the women always had a hard time getting sketches on. It always felt like You’re keeping us both from what we can do. We were contained.

What drew you to Nancy?
I love women like Nancy. There’s nothing worse than passive-aggressive, and I love snooty, passive-aggressive women. She’s a version of Endora! She’s the reason that Ron Reagan ever became a Republican. Her dad was Republican, and Ron was whatever you wanted him to be.

Ron Jr. hosted the show when I was on, and we got along famously. We did a sketch where we played two queens who were house-sitting Nora Dunn’s apartment, but while she was gone, we had faggot-ized the place. And I said, “I put fairy dust in every corner of the place!” She comes home and she’s like, “What have you queens done?” It killed in dress rehearsal, but because they were in the White House, we could not do it. And her son said to me, “You’re more like my mother than my mother is.” I was playing her mean and petty and bossing him around. That’s what the real Nancy was. He said, “Hello, mom,” when he passed me in the hall. He wasn’t upset I was doing it.

What was important to you about that character?
I said, “Everything has to be perfect. It can’t look like I do sloppy drag. I want her hair perfect. I want her earrings.” So that’s what I did.

Was playing her as a gay man a way of getting back at her for the Reagans’ handling of AIDS?
Yes, because she was not mentioning it; the Reagans were not mentioning it. There was no help. You felt like crying. You felt all the time, The country’s doing great! They’re having the ball; meanwhile, this is a major gay holocaust.

And that factored into your portrayal?
Yeah. I made it like, “I’m devoted to this great country of ours!” I showed her picking out china for the White House. She was hilarious, and people didn’t like her. She’s petty! So she was a great person to play. She was a great villainess, in a way, but I never totally hated her guts. I don’t go to that place about anybody. I thought, You’re doing a bad job. You’re terrible. And you know gay people — who’s doing your hair? They were in show business.

What was the end of the season like?
The season ended in a sketch where there was a fire in 8H. Lorne only saved Jon Lovitz, and we were burnt in the fire. When Danitra and I heard about the fire sketch, we looked at each other and she said, “You know who’s going to be in that fire?” I said, “A nice Black girl, and a nice gay man.” I was furious. I was really furious. I threw a fit.

Really?
Yeah. I threw a fit. I didn’t want to do it.

You didn’t want to do any more of the show?
No. I said, “I won’t go in this fire. I won’t do the sketch.”

How did you know you were really going to get fired?
I just knew. I just knew because gay people know these things.

The next season started out with Madonna, who hosted your premiere, hosting again.
Yes, it did. And then she read some horrible apology: “I’m sorry, we’ll never do what we did last year again.”

How did that feel?
I thought that was low. If you want to start over quietly, just let people go and then recast it. You do not need to have people burn up in a fire, and you do not need to have somebody say how horrible it was. Both those things were, I thought, unprofessional, and I thought they were cruel, to tell you the truth. That was unnecessary and cruel. And then you have Madonna again on it, who actually I was in a lot of sketches with. I thought, Why would you read that? If I were her, I would’ve said, “I’m not going to read this.” Put it on a crawl or something. Don’t have her do it.

It’s a slap in the face to you and Danitra, particularly, I think. They did something groundbreaking, then apologized. 
“We apologize. We’ll never do that again.” Well, they didn’t for 30 years.

Did you connect with anyone else in the cast?
Danitra is number one. Danitra and I talked every day. Randy? Not so much. A nice person, though. He was nice enough to go along with all that Reagan stuff, and I had all the jokes.

With Robert Downey Jr. and Anthony Michael Hall, it felt like a day care. They had bunk beds in their room. They were young and high and smoking pot. Robert Downey Jr. said to me, “I used to see auras when I was a kid. You have the biggest pink aura.” And I said, “Well, thank you.” He and Anthony were really inseparable. They’d be late sometimes to the set, and you’d hear people go, “Where are the kids?”

I think what people maybe don’t realize is how much good press you got from SNL. People called you “the one bright star of Saturday Night Live’s otherwise disappointing season.”
Lanier and I were the first gay couple in People. It was a big deal to say, “I have a husband, a house in the country, a husband, and a dog” — everything I’ve ever wanted. When I got called “the one bright star,” people were mad. They wouldn’t talk to me!

Really?
Yeah. Well, I’m in an ensemble and they say I’m the one bright star, and the writers weren’t crazy about me. Because they’d go, “What is this? The circus came to town!”

Given the positive press, why do you think you got fired?
We all didn’t gel as a cast. We were all over the place. We were all from different walks of life. We were not an ensemble that worked together. I mean, Randy Quaid was great and a really good actor, but if I sat in the room with him, I’d go, “Hi.” “Hi.” We had nothing to say.

Do you give SNL credit for hiring you?
I still do. I give Lorne credit for hiring me. He supported me. He never did anything homophobic toward me — never. I’m sure he had his own pressures from the network. After that season, everybody was looking like, Okay, you failed. We brought you back, and now you failed. Well, that’s the end of you. But I give all the credit for hiring me. People needed to see a gay person on TV at that moment. That’s what was needed — a gay person who wasn’t dying, who was lively and running around doing drag, being funny, being outrageous. And I kept hearing that over and over. I got letters and letters from people telling me, “Thank God you’re doing it.” They just hadn’t seen anybody openly gay like that. And I was doing gay stuff.

Are you bitter, looking back? 
Well, I was a little bitter, but you know what? I went on, I ended up being a writer-producer on MADtv, and I kept going and producing and writing stuff and working for stuff. I did a lot of stuff.

In the ’90s, was there a sense of community among the gay comics? Did you care when Bob Smith was the first gay stand-up to perform on late night?
I had seen him before, but there weren’t that many comics, because the people that went to comedy venues were mostly straight and bridge-and-tunnel. I wanted a sitcom. I can’t think of one person who did stand-up and was open. They were in the closet.

What did you think of Scott Thompson on Kids in the Hall?
I liked him, but he also felt like he stuck out there. Sometimes he didn’t feel like he fit in the group, and I was wondering if he had a similar experience of it being like, You better get your own thing.

There was Lypsinka.

She was more in the drag world, no?
Lip sync is not really stand-up; it’s a performance art. After SNL, I started moving toward performance art too. I went all over the country doing a one-woman-show tour as Nancy Reagan, and that’s where I’d meet other people that were gay and performing. Everyone was doing something really interesting and smart, but it wasn’t stand-up.

Was there ever a sense that you were working together or toward a common goal?
No, you’d find your own thing.

How is it in Hollywood now? 
Now you get into ageism. Friends called me up one day in California, and somebody said they wanted a “Terry Sweeney type.” I called the agent and said, “This is your lucky day. I’m right here, and guess what? I’m available.” And he said, “Oh, that’s great to hear, Terry, but it said ‘Terry Sweeney type.’ We want you, but a younger version of you.”

What would you want to do now?
I’m looking for a way that I can express myself again. I don’t want to be in a group of ten other gay people doing my jokes.

One-man shows are hot right now. 
I’d like to do that. I think that would be a good umbrella for me to hide under — even in the current political climate, if you can’t do that in New York, you can’t do it on Planet Earth.

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