Paula Pell is known for her sharp wit and keen observational humor. She’s been a comedic powerhouse in both film and television, most notably for her multi-decade tenure as a Saturday Night Live writer (this won her an Emmy in 2002). In addition to her writing, Pell shines as an actress. See: Girls5eva, where she plays Gloria, a member of a y2k-era girl pop group that has reunited in middle age. All seasons are currently available to stream on Netflix.
More: Girls5eva star Paula Pell on finally getting to perform (The Treatment, 2022)
For her Treat, Pell reflects on a Saturday Night Live sketch she wrote for *NYSNC. At the time, Pell was a young writer on the show and had yet to truly experience how far, wide, and fast TV success could reach. Her skit about a fictional boy band became a hit with fans who appeared within days on TRL with banners with the song’s name. Pell was amazed and delighted by the immediate fan reaction, comparing it to her own youthful obsession with music and movies.
More: Paula Pell triumphs at mixing ‘hard comedy’ and real emotion (The Treatment, 2024)
This segment has been edited and condensed for clarity.
I have a very vivid memory of when *NSYNC was very young, I wrote a sketch called [7 Degrees Celsius], and it was a boy group that our cast members played and it was totally making fun of those boy groups at the time. And *NSYNC was the music guest, and I said, ‘Is there any way they would want to do the sketch with us?’
So I wrote a song called ‘Hold the Pickle’, where they were in their McDonald's uniforms, and they came in, and I got to rehearse with *NSYNC and write their song and write their lyrics, and they just killed it. They harmonized and they were incredibly talented and they just jumped right on it and did it.
@nsyncfanpage SUPER SIZE IT! LoL 😂 #NSYNC #fyp #nsyncforever #NSYNCFAN #snl #tvclips #fvshow #comedyclip ♬ original sound - NSYNC
And the next morning I woke up after the after-party at four in the afternoon, and [Total Request Live] was on. I looked at TRL on my television, and there were all these girls that had a long banner, because *NSYNC was being interviewed, and they had a long banner they had painted that said, ‘Hold the Pickle.’ And I looked at it, and I went, ‘Hold the Pickle?’ Wait a minute, ‘Hold the Pickle!’ And I called my mom and I went, ‘I wrote a song!’ I was pretty young on the show. I had not been there very long, and I could not believe that you could put something on television and the next morning – now with the internet, that's immediate – but I could not believe that all these girls (when I was that young, [I] would have done the same thing) … [went] to the drugstore [overnight] to get markers and make a big banner of the words from a song they loved.
Oh my God I loved it, because I just remembered when I was young and how much I was a fan of music [and how] I was obsessed with the first movie Rocky, and I wrote about it [in] my journal all the time, and I would just be obsessed. … In my journal I'd say ‘I drew a picture of Sylvester Stallone today and I'm very pleased with it.’ I was just devouring what I loved. But back in the day, you had to wait like a week for things to come out. You couldn't go devour something on the internet like you can now.
Then of course, I wrote Debbie Downer with Rachel [Dratch]. So to this day, I will be watching my soap operas, and they'll turn and go ‘Now, I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer, but I think we've been kidnapped’, and we're in the basement of Thomas’ building. It's just swimming out there, it's swimming!