One of “Saturday Night Live’s” most iconic sketches nearly didn’t have one of music’s most iconic singers take part in it.
During Season 22 in 1996, Whitney Houston appeared in one of the popular Mary Katherine Gallagher sketches on “SNL” when she served as that episode's musical guest, but Molly Shannon, who famously portrayed the nervous Catholic schoolgirl on the classic comedy show, says the late pop star almost missed out.
“I wanted Whitney in the Mary Katherine Gallagher sketch,” Shannon told TODAY on Feb. 13. “It was a Christmas sketch with Rosie O’Donnell and Penny Marshall, and they said, ‘You’re never going to get Whitney Houston. She’s not going to be in a Mary Katherine Gallagher sketch.’ ‘No, I’ll get her. I’ll get her.’
“So, I went and talked to her. And I said, ‘Whitney, can you be in it? You play a snotty schoolgirl, and you have to try to out-sing me.’ And she was like, ‘I’ll do it. I’ll do it.’”
Landing the “How Will I Know” singer turned out to be the easy part, though, because Houston was nowhere to be found as the time came to perform the sketch.
“But then the night of the show, she wasn’t there, and I was panicked,” Shannon said. “So they had to get Ana Gasteyer dressed up to do Whitney’s part.
“But then at the last second — I’m talking five seconds before we went on — Whitney showed up. ‘Get Whitney! Swap Ana out!’ And she came on, and she killed it. She nailed it.”
Shannon, who is slated to be among the stars who will appear on the Feb. 16 special celebrating 50 years of "SNL," said everything worked out and Houston was a delight.
“It was a classic sketch. And then at the end she was surrounded by a crowd of people, and she saw me and she was like, ‘Molly!’ She was like, ‘Girl, you’re crazy!’ She was so sweet,” Shannon said.
While Mary Katherine Gallagher proved to be one of Shannon’s most popular and enduring characters from “SNL,” she said the character almost got cut from the show because the response was tepid.
“You put the sketches in the read-through and I had done the character in my stage show. And it’s very physical,” she said. “I fall through chairs. At the table read, they would just read, ‘Oh, she falls into chairs. She does gymnastics.’ And I don’t know if they knew exactly how physical (it has to be).”
Shannon said the sketch didn’t appear to be a priority when she introduced it.
“So, when it was the dress rehearsal, I remember they put it really low on the list, because usually stuff they maybe don’t believe in as much, they’re going to put low on the dress (rehearsal) list. It might get cut,” she said.
“And I was kind of mad. I was like, ‘I think they’re not getting what this is. So I’m going to have to show them in a dress rehearsal.’ And then I did it, and the audience loved it.”
She also said she learned the sketch got the green light by stopping into “SNL” creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels’ office.
“And then you go into Lorne’s office in the middle of between dress and air to find out what made it into the show and it’s like seeing if you get cast in a play,” she said. “And Mary Katherine Gallagher got moved from the bottom of the show to the top. Yes!
“And it’s good that I did create a character that was so nervous, because I, Molly Shannon, got really nervous. So you could just use your nervous energy and pour it into the character.”
