Jane Curtin isn’t feeling a cone-nection with her “Saturday Night Live” work.
The 75-year-old comic actor, one of the show’s original “Not Ready for Prime Time Players” in 1975, told People that re-watching her early seasons made her realize they aren’t funny now.
In an interview posted Sunday (but conducted before the actors’ strike), Curtin said she once watched a five-year compilation DVD with her daughter and husband over Christmas, and the bits laid an egg.
“So we sat around the TV, and I had that sort of anticipatory, open-mouth grin that people have when they’re waiting for something to happen, that they know is going to be really great. And ... it never happened,” she told People. “It wasn’t funny. Not one thing was funny. There was not one utterance of a laugh or a giggle.”
Curtin famously appeared in the “Conehead” alien sketches with Dan Aykroyd and co-anchored “Weekend Update.” But nothing was tickling her family’s funny bones during the viewing. She concluded that what they watched “was terrible!”
“I think it was just one of those, you had to be there in the moment things,” she said. “That’s what happens with live TV, and with topical TV. It gets dated after a while. Remember, this was almost 50 years ago. But after we rewatched, I was like, ‘That really wasn’t a very good show. It was terrible!’”
After five years on “SNL,” the “Jules” star showed she was ready for prime time on the sitcoms “Kate & Allie” (1984-89) and “3rd Rock from the Sun” (1996-2001).
