It hasn’t taken Ashley Padilla long to become Saturday Night Live’s most important cast member. In just two seasons, she’s gone from fresh-faced newbie hoping to find her place to the show’s clear MVP and screentime leader. Her natural charisma and comfort with sketch comedy is obvious every time she’s on screen, but that doesn’t mean it was necessarily clear during her audition.
Padilla was recently featured in an Actress Roundtable with Quinta Brunson, Lisa Kudrow and others for The Hollywood Reporter, you know because she’s turning into a huge star, and during the convo, the subject of her audition came up. She revealed that she thought it went well and even celebrated with her manager because she thought she nailed it. It turns out she did not nail out. Longtime showrunner Lorne Michaels told her she needed to throw away all her material and come back with a fresh set. Here’s a portion of her quote…
On SNL, I tested once, I even celebrated after — like a total jerk. My manager and I had a drink at a bar, like, ‘We did it!’ Then I got a call a week later: ‘Lorne wants you to come back and test again. All new characters. Brand new five minutes.’
The problem with Padilla’s audition wasn’t that she was bad (or that she had a weird exchange with Michaels). It was that she spent her entire time doing characters and completely disappearing into various roles. Michaels and the producers felt like they never got a chance to see her because she was “hiding.” They told her to return to do a whole new act and not to bring any wigs this time.
She got the message and showed up as herself, trying to be funny in a more natural and less character-y way. That time it worked and she finally booked the job.
I’m used to hiding behind a character and putting on a funny voice. It was scary. But I showed up — no wigs, just my hair — and did funny stuff and it brought myself into the audition. Then I booked it.
The great thing about Padilla is she can play really over the top roles where she does disappear into a weird character, but at the same time, she’s also really good at just being a relatable woman you could meet in real life. She has an almost everyman-type vibe to her. She has a good sense of when to go really big and make the comedy larger than life and when to go more subtle and play it straight.
That’s also why she ends up being on the show so much. She can be the centerpiece of some wild sketch where she’s playing a zany character, and at the same time, she can also appear as a key support in other people’s sketches as the straight woman. She’s like Phil Hartman where she carries just as well as she supports.
No cast decisions have been made about Season 52 of Saturday Night Live, though everyone is already speculating on the future of Michaels, as well as the rest of the cast. I have not, however, seen a single person speculate on the future of Padilla. She’s still technically just a Featured Player, but at this point, it seems like the show is going to build around her. It would be a shock not to see her back next season, just as it would be a shock not to see most of her auditions from this point forward not require a second round.
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