Melissa Villaseñor on Dolly Parton, touring during COVID, and the impression she hasn’t yet perfected
Image: Graphic: Natalie Peeples Film Features Dolly Parton
Melissa Villaseñor has starred in some of Saturday Night Live’s most memorable sketches of the past few years, including “Murder Show” and “Hoops.” A gifted comedian and impressionist, she’s made waves for her spot-on portrayals of Sarah Silverman, Dua Lipa, and her beloved Dolly Parton. Now, she’s been tapped to host the 2021 Film Independent Spirit Awards, which airs Thursday, April 22, on IFC. Though she says the show was mostly pre-taped, hosting anything during the time of tiny audiences can be daunting. The toll of COVID on comedy is something Villaseñor is also keeping in mind as she loads into a van and heads out on a stand-up tour in May. Dubbed the California Girl tour, the route has Villaseñor headlining shows in comedy clubs all over the U.S. before heading home to California, where she’ll tape her first stand-up special. The A.V. Club sat down with Villaseñor to talk comedy, COVID, and how she’s approaching her first big hosting gig.
The A.V. Club: First thing’s first, you’re hosting the Film Independent Spirit Awards this year. How do you think you’re especially qualified for this role? Are you a big indie film lover? Do you have an independent spirit?
Melissa Villaseñor: Both. I’m a very independent girl. I have a backpack and I think I’ve always loved indie films. There’s something real special and sweet about them.
AVC: What’s the first indie film that you remember making a really big impact on your life?
MV: Oh man. Oh boy, I don’t know off the top of my head what impacted me. Eternal Sunshine? Is Focus Features independent?
AVC: Either way, Michel Gondry is fully independently minded. Speaking of independent minds, when you got the call asking you to host the show, was it hard to wrap your head around it? You of course have some experience doing comedy during the pandemic, but figuring out an award show without an audience could be a different animal.
MV: You know, I don’t know any different with the hosting gig. I mean, with the audience, obviously, it’d be way, way, way more fun, but I felt like I did a really good job because it’s pre-taped. There are a lot of scenes of sketches where I’m doing impressions, and then the monologue was my favorite, because I’m being myself and going through my jokes. There was just a night-and-day difference between the first few rounds I filmed, though, and later when, once I got more familiar, we brought in the camera crew and they spread out in the audience. It was a blast and we got great laughs on that. So I hope they use [those takes]. It was like, “Wow, imagine if it was a full room,” but I felt really good about everything. I feel like I could be hosting more. I was very proud of myself because I can share so many impressions and acting and singing and being funny on my own. So it’s pretty cool.
AVC: Did you have to learn any new impressions? Did you have to figure anything out?
MV: Well, I felt like I got a little bit of Carey Mulligan from Promising Young Woman. There was a little scene where I’m playing her and I didn’t start feeling how her mannerisms were until I got in the suits she wears in the bar in the first scene. I don’t know why I started feeling like I was learning it then in that moment. Most of the impressions I did for the show are of past hosts, because there really weren’t a lot of impressions that I could do from the movies this year that are nominated. I wanted to work on Frances McDormand, but then they had this other angle, which is also really funny. I think we’ve got a good, good mix of impressions in there.
AVC: And then you got to work with Carey Mulligan on SNL. Did that enrich your experience?
MV: It was really cool. And you know what? We’re the same size because [the costumers for the awards show] brought me the same suit she physically wore in the movie, and they had me try it on.
AVC: Speaking of SNL. I follow a number of the cast members on Instagram, and I’ve noticed there’s an ongoing storyline involving the doll that they made for the show that looks like Joe, the protagonist of the animated movie Soul. People are always posing with him, loving on him, and so on. Does he live in Heidi Gardner’s dressing room? What’s going on there?
MV: Heidi got to keep him. It’s tricky. Sometimes I go in there to see Heidi, and I see the body and I’m like, “Oh, my god, that’s not a real person.” It’s amazing. He’s so warm and cuddly. You have to wrap his arms around you.
AVC: You recently announced your stand-up tour. I know it’s been hard to do stand-up during quarantine. Have you done Zoom shows or remote shows? How have you been working on your set and building what’s going into it?
MV: Well, this hour is from my past eight years of material. I’ve had this hour ready and actually I was going to tape it last summer, but then the pandemic happened, so I had to hold off. I’ve been doing outdoor gigs in L.A. when I’m home. Zoom shows are a little tough. I kind of put a pause on those ones, but now that everyone’s getting vaccinated and things are opening up again, I’m going on tour. I’ll be doing comedy clubs, which will be great, because there’s going to be so many shows, so I’ll feel brushed up again. I’ll feel better about the hour and I’ll get a lot of practice, and then when I get home to L.A., I’ll tape the special, which is exciting because I’ve been wanting to do it for a while.
AVC: Going back into clubs, are there stipulations you’re putting on the audiences or the promoters? Are you asking that people are vaccinated, or are you doing outside where possible? How is it working?
MV: I feel fine. Look, I tell every place, “No one in the front row.” If they’re far enough, I feel okay. There’s no meet-and-greet, though. I’m getting warmed up. I actually did a show this weekend in Palm Springs and everyone was so spread out. I felt good. It’s lovely to have the connection with the crowd again, that’s for sure.
AVC: There’s a lot of comedy specials out there. How do you envision your special in a way that’s going to make it stand out, or make it yours?
MV: Last summer I got the idea for the special, but this year I started performing in people’s front yards and backyards and I performed in my friend’s tree house in the backyard for kids. I went up there in the top part and my comedy became funnier because all my jokes are pretty silly and childlike, so I felt more like a kid. I felt really strong up there because I was really high up and really powerful.
So then at the beginning of this year, I was like, “I can write comedy that could totally work outside in front of a tree house.” So, my dad is a fence guy. He builds a lot of stuff. So he’s going to make a little tree house and I’m going to perform in front of it in a backyard. That idea came from this whole past year. Then I’ll intercut little moments, too, where there’ll be little interviews with my family because the core of the hour is my family and my personal life. So it’s cool.
AVC: I know that you started doing stand-up when you were very young, like 16 or 18, and you’d ask your parents to drive you to clubs. How does your family feel about the material you do about them, and about your whole career?
MV: When I first started doing comedy, they really didn’t like it. They had no faith in it. It wasn’t until I started getting those first few payments, like 20 bucks for a set, that they said, “Okay, maybe you could make a living,” but then it grew. And then thankfully, America’s Got Talent happened pretty early in my journey, and I started headlining and then it changed a lot.
The bits about my parents I didn’t really start working on until, I don’t know, six years ago? The first part of the journey for many years was just celebrity impression bits, and then I got to this really sad place in my soul where I was like, “I can’t do this. I can’t be just a puppet or a parrot. People need to know me. I’m funny.” I really had to work on my own voice and bits that didn’t include impressions, so I have a nice mix of that now.
My mom still has a hard time with the bits about her. She’s like, “I don’t know, I didn’t say that,” and I’m like, “You did.” But they love it. They support me so much that they try to go to any show. If I’m home in L.A., they’re like, “Can we go?” I’m like, “Just please just stay home for this one show.” They love it so much, and it’s cool because they’ve been through it all. I mean, even the early years when I would have them take me to open mics in Hollywood or some bar in the middle of nowhere. They got used to comedy early on with really vulgar, dirty comics. They’ve seen it all. Now they have so many favorite comedians. My mom loves Marc Maron and Bill Burr. It’s just so funny to see them be edgy now. And it’s awesome. I’ve transformed them.
AVC: You did an impression of Dolly Parton earlier this season and I read that it came from you getting super into Dolly over the pandemic. How did you get into her? What were you doing? Were you listening to the Dolly Parton podcast?
MV: Yes, I got into that for a bit. I think it started with, you know, I love classic rock and just feel-good songs. I stumbled upon some of her songs on a playlist, I think. I mean, I always knew of Dolly Parton, but I then I went deep because I was like, “Wow, her songs, they make me feel really good and calm.” And then I was like, “I wonder if she has an audio book.” And then I found Dream More, and it’s just pure positivity and love. I felt like I had a best friend because I was alone and it felt so nice to hear someone just be saying things like, [does Dolly Parton voice] “You’ve got to believe in your dreams! I always knew I was going to be a star. My family said no, but I knew!” She had so much faith. I think I was spiraling, so she made me have hope again.
I didn’t really figure out how to get that impression in the show until December, when I realized that she was everywhere. She made that Christmas special and a Netflix movie and there was a holiday Christmas album and she was performing. She became the new Christmas queen, so I was like, “I’ve got to get Dolly in the show somehow.” And it wasn’t until the week when that Update premiered where I felt like, “Okay, I nailed it,” but it took me some time for sure.
AVC: Is there anyone that you have tried to figure out an impression for, but you just can’t quite figure it out?
MV: I haven’t given a lot of time to it, but I’d really love to learn Eugene Levy. Heidi brought that up. She said, “I want to do Catherine O’Hara, and I think you could do Eugene Levy.” I think I can because there have been times where I’m dressed up as a guy for the show, and it’s like, “God, I look just like my dad,” who kind of has a Eugene Levy look in a way. I get excited to do male impressions. I want to learn Martin Short too.
37 Comments
Id much rather find out about those awful tweets she deleted before she got SNL. Were those fake, what’s the story Melissa?
She was just channeling that “White Male Rage” she likes to smugly sing about.
I don’t know what she said but Twitter is pretty awful and contrary to the natural human condition where you can have a wrong, bad thought, say it, and then not feel and think that way anymore, from a minute later to longer. Alas with social media, these are immortalized and weaponized to be used against you for years. To state the obvious you already know. And social media has changed us o pay attention to what random people we don’t know say all the time, a very trivial waste of time. Not to mention the media capitalism that has been built from it.
You’re going a bit over. The Tears of a White Clown Brigade here saw… *part* of a clip, possibly second-hand from a beardy man with a bunch of toys behind him, hey you never know, and it made them angry-cry. They’re precious ceramic dolls.
She said she was scared to date black men and the world doesn’t need mexicans, I feel like I’m justified in wanting to know more about that.
She’s a national treasure and criminally underused on SNL
Yep, she’s pretty great. A lot of people can do impressions, but her tremendous voice make hers really special.
I agree, I’m always kind of rooting for her. A lot of impressionists lean on the impression to do the work and forget the joke, but she usually has some fun material. I also read this entire interview in her voice, probably because I’ve heard it so much from watching too much Adventure Time
I caught her in a show in LA over ten years ago and she was delightful and easily the standout of the night. It’s hard to wrap my head around how long she’s been doing this and she’s definitely underused on SNL – I’ll be keeping an eye out for her special…
I loved her appearance on Crashing. Most of the comics are portrayed as kind of jaded and cynical, but she and Pete bonded over their shared naive enthusiasm for comedy. She strikes me as probably being sort of like that in real life.
Looks like SNL has picked up Chloe Fineman as their new female impressionist of choice. She’s getting more screen time than Melissa, who is actually a “Repertory Player”, whereas Chloe is still a “Featured Player”.
Chloe is pretty good too, but there should be room for both of them.
Whatever form Melissa’s Eugene Levy impression takes is now my most anticipated piece of media of 2021.
A Martin Short impression, on the other hand, sounds like a dangerous endeavor. There’s a nontrivial chance some kind of rift in reality permanently traps her there in the Martin Short impression: doing an impression of Short’s impressions; finally getting SNL airtime as (a pretty decent, I must say) Ed Grimley; starring in remakes of Three Amigos, Father of the Bride, Jungle 2 Jungle; living out the rest of her days as Martin Short.
Lol that Dolly impression is Dolly impressive! My own Dolly story, which seems apropos in regards to her feelings about Dolly’s music: I dreamed once that a Dolly song was playing on the radio of a vintage pickup truck I was driving, called “Down In The Dump”, an upbeat song kind of like “Joshua”, about how you can go to the dump occasionally [everyone gets depressed sometimes], and you can find treasures there in the discarded refuse [revisiting old memories can be useful], but you shouldn’t stay there permanently [dwelling on the past can keep you from moving forward]. I can still hear the song now, at least thirty years later, and it was just what I needed at the time. Thank you, Dolly Parton!
I’ve fallen off of SNL over the past decade or so. Here and there I’ll pop in but overall, not so much so I had no idea she was on the show. I actually first saw her on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, having no idea who she was and wow, I thought she was great just from that. She’s someone who’s live show I would definitely seek out whence things return to semi-normal.BTW…can you IMAGINE the amount of concerts that are going to be happening in the next 6-12 months or so? Every band/comedian in the world has had to lay low for over a year and they’re all gonna bust out on the road at the same time. It’s going to be crazy. I’m going to go broke but it’ll be worth it. Hopefully the clubs that haven’t gone under will get paid in full 10X over the next year.
There’s a bunch of clips of her on Youtube if you ever want to see any of her SNL work. She’s very underused, but “Bedroom” and “Dirty Talk” and “Hobbies” and “Melissa Seals the Deal” and “Animal Crossing” all use her well. She also has a few good Update pieces, like “Every Teen Girl Murder Suspect on Law and Order.”
It’s funny the first thing she mentions in the interview is her backpack. Makes me think about her Hobby song on SNL. She’s very protective of her backpack.
This is my favorite impression she does. JLO and with this JLO filter I was crying from laughing. Because I picture this is exactly how JLO is at home.
Her Gwen Stefani s killer! lol
One of her more obscure impressions
She is so completely cool – impressions are one thing, but she brings this wild and unique perspective to the actual jokes underneath them. Beats me why she’s not top billing on SNL ey
Why do you think you’re qualified for the job is a pretty snarky start to an interview. Followed up with basically, “Oh yeah? Name an indy film!”
It’s not that easy to name an indie film! “Indie films” today are mostly portfolio pieces by trust fund film school grads trying to get a job in Hollywood. Usually decent technical skills, a name actor or two who could be gotten on the cheap and a perfunctory but hollow script that follows all the scriptwriting class rules. Maybe tackling a hot-button topic like “Me Too”, maybe just another good ol’ coming of age tale because being a teenager is all the experience the filmmaker’s had. But there just aren’t that many independent movies being made outside whatever “the system” even is any more and there’s not really a support or distribution system for them either. Certainly not film festivals which are wholly co-opted by schmoozers. You still get some (and some of it is amazing) but I don’t think it’s anything like it was when “indie cinema” was a whole scene of its own.
I think most of us would settle for naming something with an “indie vibe” at this point.
“It’s not that easy to name an indie film!”
The Phantom MenaceNo studio. No financiers. Just George and his checkbook and his dreams.
Makes me wonder how this hasn’t become a weekly part of SNL
I feel like SNL has somehow stumbled into one of the best lineups its had in ages. I say this because Melissa is an ace and a star, and yet there are at least ten people as good as her on the cast.
sexiest person on earth with gray hair
She’s a great impressionist and seems like a cool person … I don’t think she’s great in sketches though. To me she comes across as more of a comedian than an actor. That was true of Leslie Jones but they put her in sketches all the time (because she was a breakout star based on personality, maybe?) and she became a better actor.
Kind of a weird question, but does anyone know if she was or is an athlete of some sort? There was a photo of her in some interview a while back where she was in athletic gear, and I was like wait, what? She’s fit, but not normal fit, I mean like ripped. So was wondering if she was a track athlete or a triathlete or something, because it’s almost impossible to get that fit otherwise.
I have a feeling that she is going to read all these responses while drinking coffee.
I can’t wait to see what she does post SNL.She’s got a tough act to follow hosting the Spirit Awards. Aubrey Plaza killed it. (Academy awards needs to get her to host.)
Melissa has so much talent, which she just rarely gets to properly use on SNL (every season I hope that will change, but with that show once something sticks it is hard to un-stick). I’m glad your interview focused so much on other aspects of her life and career so she can define herself more on her own terms.
“I’d really love to learn Eugene Levy.”
I don’t know if it’s been going on for a long time and I’m just now noticing, but there seems to be a real renaissance right now of women playing men for comedy, and it seems the reverse has traditionally been much more common. I’ve noticed it here and on “Black Ladies Sketch show”. Whether it’s newly more common or not, I’m loving it.
She’s not done with SNL yet, so there’s still hope they’ll use her better. I actually think this year has done a lot of favors for the cast, there are so many people you don’t get too many sketches where people are just pressed into service, the casting has been pretty good, and some of the performers can just take a week off at times (Cecily last week)…although I was a bit concerned when Melissa didn’t show for the first few weeks.Also…I apologized for commenting on an actress’s appearance before and I do again here…with the tattoos and the shock of gray hair and the fact that she now appears to have the body of an MMA fighter or somebody addicted to crossfit, she seems to still somehow be getting even more attractive every week.