Live From the Plaza, It’s SNL’s 50th Anniversary Special After-Party Extravaganza!
Kenan Thompson is the first cast member to arrive at Saturday Night Live’s 50th anniversary after-party. Or I should say, the first current cast member: plenty of former SNL stars, like Alec Baldwin, are inside The Plaza already, as well as mega-celebrities like Bad Bunny, Chris Pine, and Lady Gaga. But Thompson (who, at 22 seasons, is the longest-tenured cast member in the show’s history) walks through just past midnight, ready to take a victory lap after a marathon weekend that began with Friday night’s concert at Radio City Friday and culminated in “SNL50: The Anniversary Special,” a three-and-a-half-hour live telecast at 30 Rock earlier that night. He flashes a smile to everyone and anyone.
At first, I think he must be exhausted. But then I realize that Thompson is probably just used to it. Over his 400-plus episodes, he has done this, well, 400-plus times. SNL after-parties have existed almost as long as the show itself: since the 1970s, the cast, crew, and hosts have headed to some sort of watering hole after each live taping to celebrate (if you had a good show) or blow off steam (if you had a bad one). In that first decade, it was often at John Belushi’s Blues Bar down on Hudson Street, where Keith Richards and James Taylor would show up to jam with the late actor. As the show and its cast went from responding to the zeitgeist to defining it, so too did their parties grow in ambition.
In 1993, the New York tabloids went into a frenzy when Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, and Christy Turlington walked into the restaurant Dish with Christian Slater, who was fresh from his SNL gig that night. And at SNL’s 40th anniversary after-party in 2015, Prince took the stage to perform an impromptu set—as did Taylor Swift. “It’s still such a ritual,” Rachel Dratch told the New York Times in 2014. “I didn’t miss one party.”
The drunken antics that occur at them are equally legendary. Kristen Wiig admitted to Jimmy Fallon that she chipped her tooth at the after-party following her final show in 2012. (At the same party, Jason Sudeikis got enough liquid courage to do impromptu karaoke with the Foo Fighters.) Aidy Bryant confessed she once blacked out and fell asleep in her apartment’s hallway. Kate McKinnon said her hair once got stuck on a Woody Harrelson’s sweater button for 20 minutes and they couldn’t pull it apart. During tonight’s 50th anniversary live show special, Adam Sandler recalled a certain memory that involved booze and a post-taping after-party in his original song “50 Years”: he may have shaded Steven Spielberg and Jaws during his tenure. “50 years of writers seeing Spielberg at Lorne’s monitors/Not laughing at one of their sketches that he obviously hated/ 50 years of those same writers getting wasted at the after-party and loudly telling everybody that Jaws was overrated.”
Every single person I just mentioned is here, by the way. Every. Single. One. Harrelson’s wearing a tie-dye tie that someone has inexplicably and indecipherably signed with a Sharpie. (“Who signed your tie?” I ask him. “Thanks,” he says with a wobbly smile.) Sandler—who the internet regularly memes wearing basketball shorts and baggy polos—is in a nicely fitted tux. In fact, the person with the most “Sandler-like” outfit is not Sandler at all but Sudeikis, who is in a hoodie and baseball cap.
Some other late-night outfits of the late-night crowd? Ego Nwodim is in a baby-blue Marc Jacobs dress (look 13 from his fall 2024 collection, to be exact), whereas Chloe Fineman is in vintage Guy Laroche couture. (Her stylist, Yael Quint, tells me that her dress is from 1975—making it 50 years old, just like SNL.) Heidi Garner is in a sparkly sequined Sandy Liang minidress, which she’s paired with ballet flats and a tiara. Emma Stone, meanwhile, is in the same custom Louis Vuitton dress with comically large, popcorn-filled pockets that she wore on the show. At the moment, Stone’s left one fits her entire purse. (Which frees her hands up to do other things: Mainly waving an Italian breadstick in the air along with Danielle Haim, who soon started to air drum to the beat of the music. Sandler, passing by, joins in for a few moments.)
There’s a lot of those little moments. JJ Abrams high-fives Keith Richards. Kim Kardashian listens intently to Bowen Yang by the bar. Sabrina Carpenter and Jenna Ortega pose for photos together on the dance floor. In a nearby booth, Peter Dinklage lounges with Natasha Lyonne and Chris Rock. Lorne Michaels, the legendary patriarch of Saturday Night Live, sits at a table in a back room alongside Baldwin. Olivia Munn and John Mulaney hold hands the entire night. Meanwhile, despite the majority of the party’s action now occurring on the third floor of the Plaza’s Grand Ballroom, Steve Martin and Catherine O’Hara sit on a couch right by the first-floor entrance. O’Hara’s shoes are kicked off.
Elsewhere, the stage on the third floor—despite being completely outfitted with amps, microphones, and drums—has sat empty for hours. Someone tells me that there’s no official performance schedule, per se. They’ve just set it up for anyone who feels like getting up there—a nod to the Blues Bar days. And at 2:30 a.m., that was Arcade Fire.
On more than one occasion in the ’90s, as Saturdays turned into Sundays, Ana Gasteyer found herself out way too late at an SNL after-party. “Will Ferrell used to always say, ‘Uh-oh, it’s the icky blue light,’” she said. “We would look out the window and it was light outside, and we would all crawl home to bed.” As the band played on and the ballroom at the Plaza became even more packed, it was clear that for many people here, it would be an icky-blue-light night. Let’s just hope, unlike Bryant, they make it all the way through their apartment doors.
Photographed by Poupay Jutharat1/48Sarah Jessica Parker
Photographed by Poupay Jutharat2/48Bad Bunny
