The Women Of SNL Reunite For Glamour, Spread Lady Love

On February 15, Saturday Night Live will air a special episode to celebrate its 40th year on the air. Over the past four decades, some of the greatest characters have been played by the killer women who have called Studio 8H home. To celebrate the ladies of laughter, Glamour reunited the female cast. "They showed women as smart, funny, complicated, and real," Glamour's Megan Angelo writes in the feature. Though, once you read the interview with Kristen Wiig, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, and more, it's clear that they were also in the habit of championing each other off-stage. "We were brazen, and women were not brazen prior to SNL. We portrayed women as people, which is huge," Jane Curtin told Glamour.  And, as Tina Fey explains in the interview, each cast member was expected to write for themselves — which gave women the space to be more than just wives and girlfriends in sketches. "That's the difference between getting handed the part of the stewardess and getting to play what you think is funny. You're not going to stay up all night to give yourself one wife line," Fey told the magazine. They were able to embrace female roles.

Outside of SNL, women in comedy were expected to downplay their femininity, according to alum Rachel Dratch. "When I came up in comedy, you had to gender-neutralize yourself for good roles. If you thought of yourself as a woman instead of as one of the players, you'd be relegated to the waitress role. But, in my time on SNL, that started changing," she told Glamour.  Perhaps what's most comforting about what the women had to say is how they describe each other. "I was looking for a community, and most of us women huddled up together," Maya Rudolph said in the interview. Curtin echoed her sentiments: "The women on the show were very tight—we respected each other's talents. And we understood that we were going to have to work harder than the guys." To be sure, the guys haven't gone unnoticed in Glamour's spread. Colin Jost, Michael Che, and Taran Killam all make an appearance in the women's reunion photo. A spokeswoman for Glamour explained the reason for having some of the male cast involved. "These guys love the women of the show, and they wanted in. They grew up watching them! And what's better than guys paying tribute to legendary women?" she told Refinery29 in an email.  To read the full story, pick up the latest copy of Glamour which will hit newsstands on February 10.