THE GUEST OF HONOR: MAYA RUDOLPH
Who better to enliven and deepen the dinner conversation?
Do you know that quintessential dinner party question? The one that asks which six people you’d invite to sit around your table (dead or alive) for heartfelt tete-a-tetes? Well, one of my six is none other than improv goddess, Maya Rudolph.
Yes. She’s my favorite female SNL alum. I choose her earth-momma goofball antics over the talents of Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Kristin Wig any day. Why? There’s a deep well beneath her silliness that gives a peak at relatable pain underneath. Rudolph’s comedy feels raw, as if her contiguous laughter could easily turn into mountains of tears at any moment.
Yet somehow, she still comes off healthy and grounded.
The Emmy award-winning comedian was born to music producer father, Richard Rudolph, and five-octave coloratura soprano, Minnie Riperton who sang backup vocals for Etta James, Muddy Waters, and Chuck Berry. Minnie later worked with Stevie Wonder who co-produced (with Rudolph) Riperton’s second album, 1975’s Perfect Angel featuring the career peak single, “Loving You”.
"My mom was music. Music poured out of my mother, and I'm sure I heard it before I even got here when I was in her belly. Music sounds and feels very normal to me.” Maya once told NPR.
Minnie Riperton was diagnosed with Breast Cancer and became a spokesperson for the American Cancer Society and won the Cancer Society’s Courage Award in ’78, the year before her death.
Sadly, Maya was just 6 years old at the time.
A tragedy experienced so early in life can help form one’s personality. Based on past articles and interviews, Rudolph is aware of the “sad clown” paradox she’s come to inhabit.
Despite this profound loss, Rudolph carried on.
Even as a very young girl, her goal was set on Saturday Night Live. Yet before she could reach that gold ring, she channeled her artistic DNA into photography at UCSC, then later as a member of the Weezer adjacent band, The Rentals.
After college, Maya joined the famed L.A. Improv troupe The Groundlings which set her up for TV guest spots until 2001 when she officially joined the SNL cast.
"It was my childhood dream,” she later gushed. “To have your childhood dream realized is a really big deal. A lot of beauty, love, and pain goes into [your] first loves.”
Rudolph’s iconic impressions, such as Christina Aguilera, Beyonce, Maya Angelou, Oprah, Donatella Versace, Whitney Houston, and Kamala Harris solidified her as a towering figure amongst prestigious alumni.
After leaving SNL, Rudolph went on to produce successful existential dramedies like Forever with fellow SNL alum, Fred Armisen, and Russian Doll, plus Poker Face—co-produced and starring, Natasha Lyonn. Her most recently released producing project is the second season of Loot. In it she stars as a recently divorced tech billionaire who decides to work for one of the charities she founded, forcing her to become a better human.
It's a timely redemptive story.
Even so, Rudolph maintains that her most important project to date is her family. She has four children with filmmaker, Paul Thomas Anderson.
"The triumph is the people that love each other. I mean, I feel lucky having—I never imagined I'd have four kids—that was never the goal," she told Us Weekly. "I feel really lucky that everyone is healthy and amazing. It's endless stuff. It's endless entertainment, it's endless stress, endless responsibility. Everyone's at different ages and levels, everyone's into different stuff. But everyone is into slime."
Daily, Rudolph works to cultivate her children’s natural talent in the arts with music lessons. She says she enjoys being the audience instead of the performer for family living room shows. “They are natural hams!” she’s said.
However, even though her kids are exposed to the arts, their mom protects them from more mature Hollywood material: "Half the stuff I do is far too blue for my children. I shelter them, they've never seen half the things I do."
Like many SNL alums, Rudolph has managed to keep the friendships she formed over her tenure. She continues to collaborate on projects with her girlfriends. In the box-office hit comedy, Bridesmaids she surprisingly plays the sane bride, and is a highlight in the coming of middle-age comedy, Wine Country starring Poehler, Rachel Dratch, Tina Fey, Emily Spivey, and Ana Gasteyer.
While Rudolph is amazing in her element, dazzlingly us with her improvisation skills, it’s her range as a performer that excites. She especially shines in the more subtle portrayal of an expectant mother in Sam Mendes’ dramedy, Away We Go and earnestly honors the late Prince’s music legacy with her female tribute band, Princess.
The loss of her mother as a young girl, plus growing up mixed race when there wasn’t much representation in media (she’s half Black, half Jewish) might have held the average person back from dreaming big. But Maya wasn’t average. She grabbed that golden ring and is now a luminous example of the transformative power of comedy.
I’ll sign off with one of her best impressions to date. If just watching her contort her face doesn’t make you laugh, I don’t know if we can be friends.