Bill Hader Is Ready To Return To His Best SNL Character
Bill Hader has changed his mind and is willing to return to Saturday Night Live as Stefon.
Bill Hader is a man of many talents and voices and is certainly a comedic force to be reckoned with. Though lately he’s known for his Emmy Award-winning black comedy crime drama, Barry, an interview with The Guardian last year revealed that he’s willing to entertain the idea of reprising his Stefon character from SNL. Though given the current political climate and the stereotypes that Stefon embodies, he has stated that revisiting the beloved character needs to happen at the right time.
Though Stefon is one of Hader’s most beloved characters, he also realizes that the last couple of election cycles have been quite divisive, and he doesn’t necessarily want his character to be polarizing in any way. Elaborating on this sentiment, Hader has said that although he would love to revisit the role of Stefon, he wants to be absolutely sure that it will be at a time when the SNL audience will be receptive to the particular brand of humor his character delivers.
Though it’s worth noting that Stefon was more than just a stereotype, but rather a composite character developed by Bill Hader and former SNL writer John Mulaney. The flamboyantly gay Weekend Update correspondent was most well known for recommending the most awful nightclubs and themed parties that one could imagine. Stefon’s enthusiasm for such events was inspired by a real-life email that John Mulaney received involving a club that boasted “rooms full of broken glass” as one of its selling points.
One of the funniest parts about Stefon’s appearances on SNL’s Weekend Update was that John Mulaney often switched out the cue cards last minute, forcing Bill Hader to break character. So not only was Hader playing a very specific character with his own unique set of idiosyncrasies, but he would then have to improvise based on what he was actually reading live on air. So the humor behind Stefon was two-fold: Hader had to maintain his rehearsed composure as Stefon while also finding a way to bounce back from Mulaney’s mischievous manipulations to the live show.
So it’s safe to say that although Bill Hader wants to err on the side of caution in reprising his role as Stefon on SNL, we’re willing to assume that any contributions to the Weekend Update would be well-received by fans if he returns to host the show. And if Hader doesn’t feel that the time is right, we’re sure he’d be able to reach into his bag of tricks and continue to wow us with his spot-on impersonations of Vincent Price, Keith Morrison, and James Carville.
But in the meantime, it’s worth noting that whether or not he revisits his SNL stomping grounds and reprises his role as Stefon, Bill Hader is at the top of his game with his own unique style. If you want to see the dark side of Hader’s comedic mind at work, then we strongly suggest that you check out HBO‘s Barry, which is currently in its fourth and final season.
