Saturday Night Live icons Ana Gasteyer and Julia Louis-Dreyfus go way back, Gasteyer revealed on Tuesday.
In an interview for Bustle, Gasteyer, who starred on the show from 1996 to 2002, confirmed that Louis-Dreyfus was her babysitter. Both families grew up in the Washington, D.C. area.
“She was a bit older than us,” Gasteyer began, “And her little sister was my best friend.” When asked what Louis-Dreyfus was like as a babysitter, Gasteyer didn’t mince words. “She hated us,” she said.
“She would just ignore us,” she explained. “Because she was like, high school. She was like, cool… we were in like sixth grade or something.”
Louis-Dreyfus was actually the first to make the public reveal about the connection, telling Vanity Fair in 2023, “Incidentally, Ana Gasteyer was in the same class with my sister, and I babysat her and my sister when she was little.”
The actress was rewatching episodes of her hit shows for the outlet, one of which included Gasteyer’s uncredited cameo appearance in the classic “The Soup Nazi” episode of Seinfeld. “Go figure,” Louis-Dreyfus added at the time. Since Louis-Dreyfus starred on SNL from 1982 to 1985, she and Gasteyer did not overlap on the show.
Gasteyer looks back on those early memories fondly, particularly her friendship with Louis-Dreyfus’s sister, Amy Bowles.
“I had just found a report card about my friend Amy, her little sister, who is a very funny person, where the English teacher said Ana and Amy would be better suited not trying to spend so much time imitating Laurel and Hardy. And I remember being like, who are Laurel and Hardy?” she recalled.
The actress, who was Tony-nominated this year for her performance as Mildred Layton in the Broadway adaptation of Schmigadoon!, said the same teacher gave her more bad advice.
“That same English teacher, in high school, also wrote a personal note, just about me, saying, ‘Ana should not spend so much time rehearsing and a bit more time on her schoolwork.’ Turns out he was wrong,” she snarked. “Bob Thomason,” she said, naming the teacher.
“I’ll never forget—I’m a Taurus,” she quipped.
