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Kevin Nealon

When Kevin Nealon first came to Saturday
Night Live, he was so sure the show would be cancelled that he rarely
unpacked his suitcase while in New York for filming. After 10 years on the air,
the ra

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24-Weeds-Special-Section-CHARACTER-PROFILES-Doug-Wilson-(Credit-Mark-Seliger)

[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap”]W[/dropcap]hen Kevin Nealon first came to Saturday Night Live, he was so sure the show would be cancelled that he rarely unpacked his suitcase while in New York for filming. After 10 years on the air, the raucous comedy of the legendary 1970s episodes was a thing of the past. Instead of Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, in the early 1980s we had Brad Hall, Robert Downey Jr. and Joe Piscopo. Ratings were down, the writing was mostly awful, and it seemed the show was no longer worth staying in or staying up for on a Saturday night.

Then, a funny thing happened. The show got funny again. Newly rehired show creator Lorne Michaels fired pretty much everyone and in 1986 rebuilt the show around a core of mostly-unknown comedians including Nealon, Dana Carvey and Phil Hartman. For nine years—one of the longest tenures in the show’s history—Nealon was the friendly, dry-witted eye in the comedy storm. With a comic subtlety that belied his towering six-foot-four presence, he could make us laugh delivering subliminal advertising while reading the news or serving as the attendant in a ridiculously tiny bathroom. His deadpan delivery and faux seriousness often made it seem like he wasn’t even trying to be funny.

And let’s not forget “Hans and Franz,” the weight-lifter sketch he performed with Carvey which has been recently resurrected in insurance commercials. It could be argued SNL wouldn’t have recently celebrated its 40th anniversary if not for the late 1980s revival. Nealon left the show in 1995 but continued to act in films with other SNL alums, especially Adam Sandler. You may recall him as the “send the ball home” golf adviser in Happy Gilmore. In 2005, he returned to the small screen as a cannabis-loving city councilman in the Showtime hit Weeds, about a widowed suburban soccer mom who turns to selling cannabis to support her family. For eight seasons, Nealon played the crooked and debauched Doug Wilson, one of the greatest television stoners of all time.

Nealon, 61, is also a writer, animal-rights activist, musician and stand-up comic, performing in an average of 30 cities a year. He also co-produces with Ellen Degeneres the AOL Web series Laugh Lessons with Kevin Nealon. CULTURE recently caught up with Nealon to talk about his days on SNL, what it’s like having his first child in his 50s, his upcoming projects and why he doesn’t use cannabis but believes it should be legal.

Stand-Up-at-Carolines

SNL recently celebrated 40 years on air. To what do you attribute the show’s longevity?

I think it’s a perfect format for a show at that hour. It’s got topical
information. It’s quick sketches, short attention span. It’s got the hottest,
cutting edge bands. And it’s got talented people and good writers. I think
that’s why it’s lasted so long.

Television critics
point to the early ‘80s as a low point for the show. What was the atmosphere
there like when you arrived, and how did it change over the years? Did you
sense sort of a rebound?

The year before I came, I think it was at the nadir of its existence.
The 1985-86 year was pretty bleak for the show. I think they were about to
cancel it. When we came out with my cast in ’86, we were all kind of living out
of suitcases and not unpacking because we were always sure they were going to
pull the plug on the show. That show always fluctuates. It has its good and bad
years. The good years always seem to be when there’s a [presidential] election.
I remember talking to Chevy Chase once. He said people don’t remember the
original five years, the “not ready for prime time players.” He said maybe one
out of every three shows was good. The other two weren’t that good, but people
don’t remember that.

What did you enjoy
most about being on SNL
?

I liked the excitement of a live show, being in New York City, working
with a different host each week, a different band. I got to see all my idols
that I listened to growing up, like the Stones. Mick Jagger would come out with
Keith Richards, James Taylor, Paul Simon, Paul McCartney from the Beatles, Eric
Clapton. It was really a spectacular experience for me.

What were some of your
favorite characters to do on the show?

I liked doing “Hans and Franz,” with Dana Carvey. I like Mr.
Subliminal, which was the first sketch I ever did on the show. I liked doing
“Weekend Update.” That was fun. And there are some individual sketches I did
that weren’t recurring. There was one called “The Bathroom Attendant” that I
did. I was a bathroom attendant in a very small bathroom.

How did “Hans and
Franz” get resurrected, and what was it like to work with Dana Carvey again?

State Farm came to us with the opportunity to use “Hans and Franz” in
one of their commercials because they were kind of reviving a lot of the
classic characters, from “The Copy Guy” to “Da Bears,” and some others, and
“Hans and Franz” were in that group. It was fun to get back out there, and do
it again. We hadn’t done it in 20 years. And Dana and I have kept in touch.
We’re friends, and I see him every once in a while. You know we never laughed
so hard as when we came up with those characters. Every time we wrote them we’d
sit in a room, talking like them (switches
to the mock Austrian accent) and just berating everybody, but they’re
losers themselves.

It was clear you were clowning on Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Yeah, Arnold came on the show. At first we thought, ‘Why is he coming
on the show? Doesn’t he know we’re making fun of him? Can he be that dumb?’
Then we figured he was probably coming on the show to kill us.

You’ve continued to work with others from the show, such as Adam Sandler, for years. Are you still friends with many of your fellow SNL alums?

I am. I see some more than others. I’d see Sandler a lot. I’m in a lot of his films. I’d see [David] Spade a lot. Tim Meadows. We’ve lost a few people from my era, Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, Chris Farley. I miss them.

Many of our younger readers likely know you from Weeds. What are your fondest memories of that show?

It was a great cast, such talented actors, and I learned a lot from working with them. Mary-Louise Parker, Justin Kirk, Elizabeth Perkins, Andy Milder. They’re all great actors and just to be surrounded by them, I learned a lot. And the younger kids too, Alexander Gould and Hunter Parrish.

A lot has changed in the cannabis landscape since the show began. Could you have imagined back then that we’d see legal cannabis sales in stores in several states?

If Jenji Kohan, who created the show, thought it would be legal, she would probably have had second thoughts about creating the show, because I don’t think it would have the impact it did if pot were legal.

Do you think a lot of viewers sympathized with Mary-Louise Parker as a mother selling illegal cannabis?

I think maybe there was some sympathizing going on, but I think also there was a lot of judging. “Why would a mom, a soccer mom, resort to that? Why couldn’t she get a job?”

People assume you’re as big a stoner as your character. But you don’t partake, do you?

I don’t. I like to get a lot of work done, and I couldn’t really get work done when I was smoking pot. 

But you’ve tried it before?

Yeah, it makes me tired and hungry, and I usually fall asleep with food
in my mouth. I wake up in the morning, and I think I ate that food, and it’s
bad because it was left out all night.

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Do you support legalization?

I am definitely in support of it. I think
there’s so much crime that comes with trying to stop importation of all these
substances [when they’re illegal]. I was just reading an article about illegal
substances in Peru or somewhere, and there was so much crime, but once they
legalized some of the substances, nationwide crime went down so much.

I know you’re still
doing stand-up, but what other projects have you been working on since Weeds
ended?

I have a show on called Laugh
Sessions on AOL that I co-produce with Ellen Degeneres. Also I just shot
a pilot for CBS, and I’ll know this week if it gets picked up or not. (NOTE:
The pilot was not picked up by the network).

What’s the pilot
about?

It’s called Tommy,
and it’s about a comic from the Midwest and his family and how he moves back to
his hometown with his wife and baby. He has to kind of get back into being a
family with his parents, who are divorced. And the mother owns a diner, and I
play the ex-husband. Tommy Johnagin plays Tommy, and my ex-wife is played by
Jane Kaczmarek (the mother from Malcom
in the Middle).

Why do you still enjoy
doing stand-up?

It’s what I started out doing. It was my passion and my forte, and the
acting kind of came secondary. I just love the craft of stand-up comedy. I love
being on stage and creating these visual scenarios that people react to.

What’s it like to have
a child later in life?

He’s eight years old now. I do say in my act that I’m an older dad.
Here I am having a kid at my age, and all my friends are already sending their
kids off to rehab (laughs). But I love it. I love having a kid. As an older dad
you’re not feeling like you’re missing out on anything, like clubbing or going
out at night. I’ve done all that already. I was missing something and that was
having a kid.

What do you think of
today’s SNL
?

The format hasn’t changed in 40 years, so it’s familiar every time I
watch it, a familiar scenario. It’s the same intro in the beginning, a couple
sketches, a band, a sketch, Weekend Update usually comes on around midnight.
It’s just the cast has changed and the writing. Like I said, some weeks are
better than others. Some years are better than others. I haven’t seen it
lately.

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