Before John Mulaney and Simon Rich were selling out previews for Broadway’s All In, they were being “united by the collective trauma” of working for then-head writer at Saturday Night Live Seth Meyers.
In a new appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers, the trio recalled a failed sketch spoofing the ubiquitous Cash 4 Gold ads that graced television screens everywhere in the late 2000s. “We immediately collaborated and wrote so many brilliant things that you cut viciously each week,” Mulaney joked to Meyers.
The proposed, and eventually axed, “Cash 4 Silver” sketch featured then-cast member Bill Hader pleading with audiences to sell him their silver. Silver utensils and picture frames were acceptable trades, Mulaney recounted, but all was not well for the precious metal enthusiast.
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“He’s very insistent and frantic, and you gradually realized why,” Rich explained. “It’s because he and his family are marooned on Werewolf Island.”
“And they need to make silver bullets by a certain date,” Mulaney said. Rich clarified: “By the full moon.”
Meyers admitted that he recently re-read the script, which also features Kenan Thompson in an audience role asking questions like: “How will you get the money?” and Hader responding, “There’s a man here who made a deal. He works with the werewolves.”
Rich said the sketch’s numerous questions were to address any plot holes or natural inquiry that might come from viewers. “These were tightly wound Swiss watches that were cut constantly from the show, almost on the regular. It was almost a tradition to cut our thing. Everyone looked on it with great admiration and then absolutely cut it from the show,” Mulaney joked.
Elsewhere during the interview, the trio discussed a sketch that did make it on air: “Switcheroo,” written in 2009, was a Freaky Friday-esque father-son body-swap comedy — with “psychosexual” implications of what that would be like, featuring a theme song with the lyrics: “Son goes to work / Dad goes to school / The son has sex with the mom / What they gonna do? / It’s a switcheroo.”
Needless to say, the sketch was delayed as “no host was ever interested in doing it,” Meyers said, and the reception by the read-through table was also a dud. When Mulaney returned to host in 2018, however, it was subsequently revived, modified and aired under the title “Sitcom Reboot.”
The two also discussed an aired sketch called “Noodles the Dog” featuring Zach Galifianakis and Kristen Wiig, in which the actors play parents who explain to their children that their pet died via autoerotic asphyxiation. In response, executive producer Lorne Michaels — per Mulaney — said: “I hope you’re proud of yourselves. That just went out to all 50 states.”
Watch the full interview below: