Three notable Saturday Night Live alums are taking on Broadway this spring — and let us tell you, this is something Debbie Downer won’t be down about. Rachel Dratch steps into the role of The Narrator in The Roundabout Theatre Company’s revival of The Rocky Horror Show, Ana Gasteyer takes on the way too proper Mildred Layton in Schmigadoon!, and Maya Rudolph makes her Broadway debut as former First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln in Oh, Mary!.
Entertainment journalist for Spectrum News NY1 Frank DiLella caught up with besties Dratch and Gasteyer just ahead of their opening nights to talk about bringing their signature comedy back to the Broadway stage — and what they’re most excited about as they welcome Rudolph into the New York theater community. Following the initial interview, Dratch and Gasteyer also weighed in after they each received 2026 Tony Award nominations in the same category of Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical.
Ana, you’re back on Broadway, this time in Schmigadoon! Lucky us! This show has been in development for quite some time. How did you get involved?
Ana Gasteyer: The boring answer is the offer came. The long answer is, as part of the SNL family, they came to me around the time of the very first reading, but I wasn’t available. I’ve been aware of the show for a long time, and I live in the Broadway Video hemisphere. I love playing bad guys, and I was excited when they called me.
Tell me about playing the “bad guy” Mildred Layton.
AG: She’s somewhere in between Eulalie Mackechnie Shinn from The Music Man, Margaret Hamilton [the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz] and Mrs. Oleson [from Little House on the Prairie]. She’s the bad guy. She has a strict moral code and believes in upholding it, and represents “stranger danger” and xenophobia that we have come to know and love in an American musical.
Rachel, were you a Rocky Horror fan prior to taking on the role of The Narrator?
Rachel Dratch: I was familiar. I saw it when I was younger. It’s so in the air — everyone knows the songs. Well, if you’re my age. [Laughs.]
The audience seems to be pretty active with your show.
RD: When we first started we didn’t know what to expect with the callouts. It’s been a good level, and there have been a lot of callouts.
Craziest audience moment so far?
RD: The other night we had some f-bombs being thrown out; I was like, “Wooooooh, it’s going to be this kind of night!” [Laughs.] You have to roll with what’s coming at you. Overall, the callouts make the show lively.
Lorne Michaels is the lead producer on Schmigadoon! How hands-on has he been with the show?
AG: Lorne has creative faith in the people he supports. That’s always the case with him.
Ana, what I love about your show is that you don’t need to know the Apple TV+ series to enjoy Schmigadoon!
AG: I had only seen clips of the series. It’s been one of those series where I say I want to sit down and watch all of Schmigadoon! one day. When I got the show I didn’t want to watch it because I didn’t want to be influenced by Kristin [Chenoweth]’s performance. I wanted to find my own way into it. The whole premise is that two people get trapped in a Golden Age musical. And one of them hates musicals. And we all know that person — that person will feel seen by our show. That said, it’s a massive Golden Age musical. It is so fulfilling for people who love old-fashioned musical comedy. What a privilege to watch our director-choreographer Chris Gattelli do his thing. Very few people can do what he’s doing at the level he’s doing it.
There are a ton of Broadway/musical theater Easter eggs in your show. What can you share?
AG: Anyone who knows the canon is going to find everything. there are tiny references, like from Sunday in the Park. Chris added a sort of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” nod, a Newsies nod. You won’t miss Music Man, Carousel, Sound of Music, South Pacific.
Rachel, doing your show at Studio 54 feels like the right place for Rocky Horror.
RD: All the party ghosts are with us. “Give yourself over to absolute pleasure” is in Rocky Horror, and that was the vibe of Studio 54.
Is it true a witch blessed the theatre before you all started performances?
RD: Yes. A friend of [director] Sam Pinkleton’s. She came in and did a ritual of blessing the space. It was cool. It was half meditation, half communal breath together. We faced all the different directions. It was hippy-dippy and fun.
Ana, the world knows you from your TV work, but at your core you’re a musical theater gal.
AG: I found footage on Instagram, which was right after my Broadway debut in the last Rocky Horror revival 24 years ago. I love theater. I love the routine and discipline and the community. Once your show is up and running, it’s less noisy in terms of the public-facing side of it. I love the intimacy of it. I’m also a singer, and this is not like Elphaba in Wicked. This is a musical-comedy role. It’s fun to play fun goofy roles — especially as I age into them.
The SNL ladies are taking Broadway by storm this spring!
AG: It’s so exciting and not surprising Rachel is on Broadway again — she’s a Tony nominee [for POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive, and Rocky Horror]. She’s no slouch. Maya Rudolph texted me as she started to prepare for Oh, Mary! I wrote her a little text saying this is how your “put-in” will go. For the three of us, the sort of getting-shot-out-of-a-canon part is comfortable for us because that’s where we come from, this last-minute slapping-it-together part. The live component is deeply comfortable for all SNL performers. We share a common language, that people make choices quickly and swing really big. I can’t think of two women who swing bigger and make bolder choices than Maya and Rachel. I can genuinely say they are two of the funniest people on the planet. Rachel walks out in Rocky Horror and people just start laughing. I can’t wait to see Maya in Oh, Mary! She’s going to crush it. They’re hilarious humans.
Rachel, have you talked to Maya?
RD: Yes. We’re all psyched to hang out after our shows! It’s fun — the three of us from the same era are going to be strutting our stuff on Broadway. We’re like, “OMG IT’S GOING TO BE SO FUN!”
Ana, was it trippy being back at Rocky Horror to see Rachel? You made your Broadway debut in that show.
AG: What’s trippy is that I don’t remember any of it. My daughter is like, “What’s this about?” And I was like, “I don’t know.” I do love the music. The music is great. It’s joyously ridiculous.
Rachel, did you see Ana do Rocky Horror in 2001?
RD: I did. That was my first time seeing a friend in a Broadway show. I remember being psyched for her.
What’s the biggest lesson you learned at SNL that you still carry with you in the roles you take on today?
AG: You are in a community of people who are swinging big all the time. And you do fail all the time. It doesn’t make failing easier. But instinctively, putting up SNL requires big choices, loud choices, wrong choices.
RD: SNL teaches you not to stress about last-minute changes. Last-minute changes don’t faze you. And this goes back to Second City. You’re used to people yelling at you from the audience. It doesn’t stress you out.
Would you ever want to do Oh, Mary!?
AG: I don’t know if I would want to after Maya — she’s such a queen. I do love Sam and [playwright] Cole [Escola]. I don’t know.
RD: I’ve seen Oh, Mary! two times. I’ve never watched it with that in mind. I would have to see it again and think, “What would I do?” The answer is yes — it seems like a lot of fun.
Congratulations on the Tony nominations! Talk about getting the news.
AG: I was stunned. I was absolutely stunned. I was trying to avoid the whole “will they or won’t they” of it, so I signed up with the Broadway Volunteer League to work at the soup kitchen at St. Luke’s. It was the perfect thing to do because I actually had to not think about myself for two hours right after. [Laughs.] I was just blown away. I love this show. It’s so nice to be nominated for something that you feel joyful about. I am so happy for Sara [Chase] and Cinco [Paul] and [Christopher] Gattelli and Scott Pask, Doug Besterman – they all deserve nominations. And then my phone exploded. Not since I got Saturday Night Live have I had this kind of outreach.
RD: I was tuning in to the announcements to see if my pal Ana got nominated, and lo and behold, to see my name pop up was just thrilling! Now we get to pal around together! I just love the Broadway community, and to be included as a Tony nominee is a pinch-me moment.
