A feature story in New York magazine this month has illuminated a woman who may not have needed it. That’s because Ashley Padilla is a brilliant star of late-night television.
In only her second season on Saturday Night Live, Padilla has scampered up the rungs of that famously hyper-competitive environment and become its go-to performer.
There is no telling where she might go from here. Or where Padilla might take SNL.
The show has been in search of a megastar for some time. Not since Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig defined SNL from 2005 to 2012 in tandem, has the program felt the presence of greatness. There have been notable cast members in the last decade or so, such as Cecily Strong and Heidi Gardner. But none with the weight of a generational talent.
Padilla signals a sea-change in the fortunes of the show, like when Will Ferrell arrived for Season 21. Except this time, it’s less noisy. Padilla is an acting heavyweight with amazing comedic timing, but with the skills to create a spot-on funny character. She is a unicorn and a sort of “glue” the show hasn’t seen since Phil Hartman.
And Padilla is accomplishing all of this before she’s been named a full-fledged repertory player. With fewer than 40 episodes under her belt.
There is a tendency to compare cast members to previous ones. Jeremy Culhane seems sorta like Bobby Moynihan. Beck Bennett was a little like Jason Sudeikis. When SNL welcomed in Chris Farley, he was immediately compared to John Belushi.
But it’s when you can’t compare a performer to someone else that you get a unique brilliance. No one has ever been like Gilda Radner. Same with Eddie Murphy, Dana Carvey, and Hader. When he exploded on SNL in his first episode, Ferrell was fresh and unlike any performer the show had ever seen.
This is also the case with Padilla, the woman that writer Rebecca Alter called “part Jane Curtin, part Nora Dunn, part Ana Gasteyer, part Amy Poehler, part the living embodiment of Jo-Ann Fabrics.”
That’s a lot of parts, and you need them all to sum up the amazing performer that Padilla is becoming in the spotlight at Studio 8H.
In Season 50 as a featured player, Padilla steadied herself gradually and emerged as a superb actor, with occasional comedy standouts. In her second season so far, Padilla has dominated, eclipsing each of her peers to become the darling of SNL.
SNL is not like it was in 1995 when Ferrell came onto the scene. The show has 17 or more cast members, as Lorne Michaels shuffles to find a winning formula. If anyone “hired to fire” it’s Michaels, who has long since stopped being a creative genius and iconoclast. He’s now part of the corporate machine that prints money from this show and the countless programs that are spun off from its cast members and writers.
That means it’s tougher to become a massive star from SNL now, because cast members have to elbow their way onto the screen. Padilla has sharp elbows, and a wit to match.
How great has Padilla been in her second season? Fans speculate every week whether she will get bumped up to full-cast member status. But even if she’s not, the show is rapidly becoming hers.
Before Season 51, Gardner abruptly quit. Shortly after, Ego Nwodim bolted, leaving SNL in a bit of a lurch. Last December, Bowen Yang, who had won an Emmy for his performance on the show, said his goodbyes. That’s three veteran cast members exiting within months, marking a sea-change in the vibe of a show that has experienced ho-hum mediocrity in recent years.
Some critics think SNL is too safe. Some think it’s too liberal. Some think it’s not funny. They’re all correct. Michaels has, naturally, softened over the years. Political parody is practically absent from the show. Instead, a mild Trump embodiment from James Austin Johnson feels more like a tongue-in-cheek impression of a silly old uncle. JAJ’s Trump is often portrayed as clever and hip, which is the exact opposite of how parody works.
For many years now, Michaels has capitulated when NBC pressures him. He fires controversial cast members. He kills sketches that might be too critical. He hires lots of people in hopes that he is right about a few of them. He’s become what SNL used to make fun of: a rich, moderate, old Hollywood power broker.
But Padilla, perhaps joined by a few promising younger cast members (Veronika Slowikowska shows promise) could redefine the show, and make it funnier. It would help if some much-needed house cleaning was done: like sweeping away Colin Jost, Michael Che, and Kenan Thompson, all of whom have stuck around much too long.
Padilla’s strength, as Alter writes, is her ability to play a Mom, while being both sympathetic and funny. That’s a Ferrell move. Many times in Studio 8H, Ferrell was the everyman Dad with “something not quite right.” Padilla can also be a flirty lead, a crazy co-worker, and much more.
Her maturation from the famed improv troupe Groundlings to SNL has not been meteoric. Padilla is, like Ferrell, and like Wiig, a mature newcomer.
Will Michaels elevated Padilla to full cast member in Season 51? Probably not. But, it doesn’t matter. The show is hers, and it’s better for it.
RELATED
Even though Ashley Padilla has not yet completed her second season, she is ranked 108th among the more than 170 cast members in the history of Saturday Night Live, according to SNL Rankings.
