SNL alum says show in good hands
Never mind the naysayers grousing about the current cast of Saturday Night Live. Former SNL performer Chris Parnell says the kids are all right.
“I love the current cast. You’ve got a lot of talent in there, a fantastic variety of personalities and a great mix. I still watch the show and love it,” he says. “As it was when I was on there, there are some sketches that the audience doesn’t necessarily appreciate that the viewers at home do, or don’t. They’re not all going to be hits. But I think the show is still exciting and vital.”
Parnell, a gentlemanly fellow from Memphis, Tenn., starred on SNL from 1998 to 2006 — minus a few months when he was fired in budget cuts. Fans might remember some of his characters, like Mervin (Merv the Perv) Watson or Kevin Aquarius.
But perhaps most notable is the fact Parnell never broke a scene by smiling or laughing during his entire time on the show.
Not once. Not during the much-loved cowbell sketch, where nearly everyone snickered at Will Ferrell’s short-shirted shenanigans. And not during the Lazy Sunday digital short, where he and Andy Samberg rapped about cupcakes, MapQuest and The Chronicles of Narnia.
In fact, Parnell was so cool under pressure that behind the scenes he was known as The Ice Man. The nickname came from fellow cast member Colin Quinn, who was impressed by Parnell’s stone-faced first performance on camera.
“I think people enjoy it a lot of the time when they do see the actors break, as long as the actors are trying not to do it,” Parnell says. “But you can get a little overindulgent with it. Coming as I did from my actor background, I would always try to be in the character. And typically what is going on in the scene isn’t funny to the character.”
The acting bug bit early, and Parnell occasionally helped out his dad, a voiceover artist and disc jockey, by doing the kids’ voices in commercials. He performed his first play in Grade 7.
“I was a bit of a class clown, and when I finally found the theatre department, especially when I moved into Germantown High School, it was such a perfect fit for me. Looking back, I realized it was the world I was trying to find my way into all along,” he says. “While I was in high school doing plays and going into college, it seemed that what people responded the most to was when I would do comedic roles. It clicked that I was always trying to make other kids laugh — not always successfully, but it made sense.”
Parnell eventually taught acting and film at his former high school and later moved to Los Angeles, where he joined the star-making comedy troupe The Groundlings.
“I tried to break into voiceover work when I moved to L.A., but it’s a hard world to break into. And it wasn’t until I got out of Saturday Night Live with a jump up in recognizability that I was able to hook up with a voiceover agent in New York,” the 48-year-old says.
“One of the first things I did was WordGirl, which is still on PBS. And then along came Archer (in which he voices field agent Cyril Figgis) and it took it to another level.”
Parnell has made some memorable onscreen appearances since SNL, including in the Anchorman films, the 21 Jump Street movie and 30 Rock. But most recently he’s been working on Netflix’s animated series The New Mr. Peabody and Sherman Show.