Venerable comedian Maya Rudolph is coming to NBC in her own variety type show May 19 at 10pm ET. “ I watch The Carol Burnett Show with my kids and they love it” said the actress via telephone.
“I had always wanted to do something like this but wasn’t really sure exactly what it was. Once I left SNL, sort of had, you know, had the bug and couldn’t really cure it. It’s hard when you perform live on a regular basis and then you stop performing live because it feels like there’s a part of you missing.
And so I started talking about it to people. And it wasn’t until – I started working on ‘Up All Night’, working again regularly with Lorne. I mean one of the reasons I wanted to do ‘Up All Night’ was to continue to be a part of my SNL family and keep that alive. And we got to talking and I said, “You know, I really want to do a variety show.
I just – I think after all this time of being away from the show and getting out there and doing movies and figuring out what it is that makes me happy – happiest, I should say, I think I realized, “This is really something that feels like me and something that I don’t – not only do I want to do, but I want to do with as many of my friends, and people that I admire, as possible.”
Joining Maya is Fred Armisen, Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell among others.
“Those guys are like my brothers, you know, I know them so well and they’re such wonderful people.”
“And then I met Sean Hayes doing ‘Up All Night’, who I fell madly in love with, and we just have a special bond. I find him to be like a thoroughbred when it comes to comedy. He’s just unbelievable, not only as a comedian and a performer, he’s also done Broadway.
He can do anything. He’s like a quadruple threat or whatever threat – whatever number threat he is, he is. But he also just is one of those people with one of the best attitudes possible, which is you know, “Life is good.
Like we get to do this, all of this is. You know, he’s just like, he just
comes to play and have fun. And we just – we laughed our asses off.”
Looks like we may be laughing our asses off too.
Grammy Award-nominated singer-songwriter Janelle Monae will serve as the musical guest. R&b singer-producer Raphael Saadiq will be the bandleader.