Saturday Night Live breakout star Ashley Padilla has become must-see TV, even for the show’s legends.
“Ashley Padilla is a miracle. You can’t look away,” iconic SNL writer Robert Smigel said on X after Padilla’s performance alongside host Jack Black on April 4.
Smigel, 66, who created memorable sketches in the ’80s and ’90s like “Da Bears” and “More Cowbell,” said Padilla, 32, was a breath of fresh air for the show.
“She is one of those performers that remind you it’s worth watching every week," Smigel, who noted that Padilla stays “completely ahead of the audience,” told LateNighter.
“The older you get, the harder it is to be surprised and sit up at attention because you don’t know what’s going to happen next,” he added.
After joining SNL‘s 50th season in 2024, Padilla became a standout star in her second season for her grounded character work and over-the-top physicality.
Smigel likened her to Kristen Wiig, who was nominated for eight Emmys during her SNL tenure.
“Ashley is at that level of originality,” he declared.
Directly after Black’s 5-Timer’s club monologue, Padilla tormented the School of Rock star as an extremely boring and far too revealing coworker, Kathy, whom Smigel called “beautifully absurd.”
While Black and his fellow office workers try to enjoy their lunch, Padilla interrupts with equally mundane and personal declarations—that she brought her own nachos from home, followed immediately by the revelation that she crushed her birth control into them.
“Gotta trick myself like a dog, otherwise I won’t take my birth control,” Padilla says while staring at Black, admitting that “it’s not for sex,” but for other health ailments like “uterine growth,” and “excess hair.”
The sketch’s other four characters try their best to ignore Padilla, who is unrelenting in her persistent vapidness, by talking about Survivor.
“We talkin’ TV?” Padilla asks a full 15 times in monotone, varying the delay between questions to try to break her castmates, who unwittingly relent at her final ask.
“What I love about her sketch work is that she’s not a broad performer at all,” Smigel said. “She doesn’t make funny faces. Her characters are grounded. They’re recognizable people. She just adds seven percent to reality, and it makes all the difference.”
“She’s able to dig into the unconscious of her characters and bring out thoughts and behaviors that surprise you but ultimately make perfect sense,” he added.
Smigel’s favorite sketch of Padilla’s—and perhaps the best SNL sketch this season—came in February, when she played a Trump-voting mom who reluctantly confesses to her children that she changed her mind about the president.
As the mom, Padilla is so reluctant to receive an “I told you so” from her children that she makes them rehearse their reaction to her confession.
“It was beautifully human,” Smigel said. “It’s not just writing on the surface. She’s taking it further: examining how much anxiety this mother has at the thought of confessing to her kids.”
Smigel, who also created Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, said, “I’ve gotten mostly known for doing bigger, louder things. But deep down, my favorite stuff is the quiet stuff.”
“I still watch the show because there are still moments like that,” Smigel said. “If you like sketch comedy, you gotta keep watching.”
SNL returns on April 11 with host Coleman Domingo—who will be making his SNL debut—accompanied by Anitta as musical guest.
