Happy Birthday, Bill Hader (June 7th, 1978)
Oh yeah, this too! Pictured on top is of Tina Fey’s final Weekend Update and while pictured below is not Seth Meyer’s final Weekend Update, this part last night reminded me of each other
Stefon’s Wedding |x| SNL 18/5/2013
German Smurfs, Gizblow the coked up Gremlin, Human Fire Extinguishers, Ben Affleck and is that Ryan Seacrest? No it’s a drowned albino who looks like Axl Rose.
I’m going to miss Bill Hader.
bill, thanks for 8 hilarious years!
Bill Hader for GQ
Bill’s first show was the season 31 premiere episode way back on October 1, 2005. Steve Carell was the host while the musical guest was Kanye West. He only made 3 appearances but by the end of the night, he made a really great introduction to us all.
This right here was Bill’s first sketch ever. It was the JetBlue sketch. It was about a plane that had to make an emergency landing. Amy Poehler who played as a passenger on the plane was freaking out about it while Steve Carell, who played as her husband, wasn’t paying attention because he was busy watching TV. Bill played as a person who was commenting on the situation. Nothing major but it had to be noted because this was the first time we ever saw him in a sketch.
This is where things picked up quickly. This was the Anderson Cooper 360 sketch. It was about celebrities helping to rebuild New Orleans after the destruction of Hurricane Katrina. This was the first ever impression Bill did, Al Pacino. It was spot-on. Around this time, the only other SNL cast member I knew of who did an impression of Pacino was Chris Kattan and he didn’t even come close to being this good. In fact, after Bill was done, he got a big applause over it. I think by this point, he had won over so many people that he would be someone that could do strong impressions
This was Bill’s final appearance of the night, alongside another new cast member, Andy Samberg. They appeared as themselves on Weekend Update to do an “Impression Off”. This gave Bill a great chance to show that he had a wide range of impressions he was good at. It also showed that Andy would be the goofy guy on the show as he didn’t do any impressions at all, just talked in his normal voice but threw in “Wazzup!” at the end. It also gave us a very memorable exchange between Bill and Andy:
Bill Hader: OK, you guys, that sounds nothing like Christopher Walken. And “wazzup,” that’s like a beer commercial from, like, seven years ago!
Amy Poehler: Wow, looks like we got a little new guy rivalry.
Andy Samberg: Yeah, maybe your last name suits you, hater!
Bill Hader: It’s Hader with a “d.”
Andy Samberg: “It’s Hader with a ‘d,’ Wazzup!!”
I think that his first show he made a giant impact on what we would be seeing for the next 8 seasons. Of course as time went on, he started having some great characters too, his most popular being Stefon. But yeah, his performance on his first show was amazing.
