“Cook My Meat”: The Spectacular Resurrection of ‘SNL’s “Lisa From Temecula”

Nwodim: I could not get through the sketch. I was so tickled by it. But I was like, I don’t know if this sketch is going to go, because I was dying [laughing].

Punkie Johnson: Sometimes you can sit at the table and you can feel it. When we were at the table and Ego pulled out that damn steak and really gave us a visual of how it would look, that’s when I went, Oh, hell yeah. This shit getting picked.

Buzz for “Lisa From Temecula” continued to build. It was slated to run sometime before Weekend Update. 

Nwodim: There were high expectations for the sketch. All week people were like, “Your sketch is going to be incredible.” That, for me, is jinxing the sketch. Every time that happens, the sketch goes horribly wrong and the audience doesn’t respond to it. I was like, “Please, no. I don’t want that energy on it.”

Kearney: I loved the whole bit of it. It reminded me of watching classic, old-school SNL growing up. I was excited for it the whole time. But you’re always worried about sketches getting cut.

English: Saturday, the day of the show, we were doing the run-through rehearsal. Gary and I were in the control room watching, and when we came back to the writers room on the ninth floor, everyone told us they had the sketch on mute on the control monitor and everybody was laughing watching the screen. And that was just on a rehearsal. 

Nwodim: One of the producers had said to me, “We haven’t had a recurring character in so long, and we think this will be a recurring character.” On Friday, Lorne told us to give the character a more prominent name. He wanted something that people could call back to. We were like, “She’s Lisa.” Then Alex and Gary made her more memorable with Lisa From Temecula.

Kearney: I did not hear that, but I love that. It makes a lot of sense.

English: The rewrite went smooth. Everyone made great pitches. 

Nwodim: Lorne’s already thinking it could recur, and we haven’t even done it in front of audience. That is pressure. 

English: It was all pretty smooth until the dress rehearsal. 

Pedro Pascal (Late Night With Seth Meyers, Feb. 15): It bombed during dress. There was a big bone in the middle of the steak that she couldn’t saw through, for one, and they were just being a little tame about the table moving, and it really didn’t work. 

Nwodim: The table is not really shaking, which is surprising to me. God, what happened? I had a T-bone steak, which is also a surprise to me; as many steaks as I’d cut through that week, none was a T-bone. I could not do the big physicality with the T-bone. Afterwards, I found out someone got a note to not shake the table as much. That was not the best call [laughs]. 

Johnson: Why the hell is the table not shaking? Because if the table don’t shake, then the sketch doesn’t make sense. We’re not showing how tough the steak is. Then Lisa comes to the point of the sketch where she has to say, “There’s wine all over the table, there’s food everywhere.” When she says the line, it doesn’t make sense, because the table didn’t shake. It didn’t connect for the audience.