On March 16th, 2017, Saturday Night Live’s Mikey Day and Cecily Strong performed at UGA for University Union’s Thursday Night Live.
Mikey Day opened the show, and revealed that this was his first time performing at a college. Day “warmed up” the crowd with photos of dogs in Halloween costumes, and then moved into describing various sketches he’d thought of for SNL that had been rejected. Some of the sketches were quite funny, and others met with awkward silence – the exact reason they never made it to the show. After a few rejected sketches, Day put up screenshots of prank texts and e-mails he’d sent to his father, which left the audience with stomach-aches due to laughter. Day claims he’ll be known for being “Left Skeleton” in the David S. Pumpkins’ sketch.
The main performer, Cecily Strong, claimed that she’s “not a stand-up” comic, and that her part of the show was just going to be her telling stories. Strong used notes throughout her act, because “SNL has fried [her] brain”. Cycling through various family members and friends, Strong recalled hilarious real-life experiences involving National Coming Out Day, Aidy Bryant, and Texas’ Sheriff’s (but not all in the same story, of course!). At various points in the show, random audience members would “whoop” which led to some funny reactions from Strong. She made multiple jokes about her age – including that she’d been to UGA before in 1973 with Second City (Strong was born in 1984). Strong is currently best known for her “Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started A Conversation With At A Party” character on Saturday Night Live. In addition to SNL, Strong was also the featured enterainer at the 2015 White House Correspondent’s Dinner.
The event ended with Cecily and Mikey taking questions from the audience. Questions ranged from which SNL alum is their favorite, to advice for a 20-something who doesn’t know what they want to do with their life. Overall, it was a Thursday night well-spent with lots of laughter. Thank you to University Union for bringing these awesome people to our campus!
All gifs from Giphy.