Funny Girls

One-minute-20 to the 'French Whore,"' announces a Saturday Night Live stage manager. Cheri Oteri, in black lace, her left arm in a sling, prepares for a game-show sketch in which she plays Babette, a 58-year-old Parisian prostitute. Next to the coffee machine Molly Shannon rehearses her send-up of Monica Lewinsky peddling her forthcoming tell-all book, How to Give the President a Hummer. (She prefers to call it Mouth Love.) Nearby, Ana Gasteyer massages a joke with a writer for her portrayal of Cinder Calhoun on "Weekend Update."

They are a triumvirate of feral, funny and fearless women--comic daredevils, chameleons and, sometimes, gymnasts. They play sex goddesses, punks, junkies, warriors and politicians with equal conviction. They sniff like police dogs for every morsel of information that will make a character rich, funny, complicated and real. They may be the best female cast SNL has ever had.

"What is interesting about these three women is that in addition to being as talented as they are, they're incredibly confident," says Lorne Michaels, executive producer of the show for 18 of its 23 seasons. "They're really powerful. Onstage they have to win over the audience, assert the comedy and not compromise what they really believe in."

Ana Gasteyer's fascination with what she calls "phony personalities" suffuses her parodies with the kind of nuance and physical detail that can't be scripted. Gasteyer grew up in Washington, D.C. and did brief tours of duty as a hospital switchboard operator, office temp and restaurant hostess before joining the Groundlings, the Los Angeles--based improv--sketch comedy group. "I spent my childhood watching the women on Saturday Night Live, thinking I could be a woman doing funny stuff on television," she says. From her fictional National Public Radio host, Margaret Joe, to Cokie Roberts, she's fiercely intent on creating "a total ambience" around her characters. Her takeoff on Martha Stewart is matchless: "A terrific way to combat Valentine's Day depression is to treat yourself to an erotic cake."

A two-year (concluded on page 175) Funny Girls (continued from page 83) veteran of SNL, Gasteyer is clear, collected, earthy and married. "Molly, Cheri and I didn't come in here with a braburning passion to change the show. We just want to be artists, to be onstage, and write stuff that's good. I don't feel we're in an environment that puts a whole lot of status on gender. Creatively, it's incredibly demanding."

Molly Shannon, now in her fourth season, admits "SNL is a tough place. You have to be a tough person, driven, a self-starter." Her father raised her alone from the time she was four, when her mother was killed in an automobile accident. "Because of what I went through, I had a feeling nothing could stop me. I couldn't stand it when people would tell me I couldn't do something. I'd think, How hard can it be?"

After college, the girl from Shaker Heights, Ohio headed to Los Angeles, where she wrote and produced The Rob and Molly Show with her friend Rob Muir. She packed the Up Front Comedy Theater, then, landed a five-minute audition-with Michaels. "Every Saturday, when I see all the people in the audience, I still think to myself, I didn't have to invite them and I don't have to pay for the band."

Shannon's signature creation is Mary Katherine Gallagher, who was born 11 years ago as a tribute to morbidly anxious girls everywhere. "I used to get really nervous when I would perform. As I have grown, she has grown," Shannon says of her armpit-sniffing alter ego. "I think growing up is a really big deal, so it's about her nervousness in coming-of-age." That may explain the repressed sexual fever in her quavering voice and heaving chest as a gymnastic frenzy flings her into a wall. "When the Spice Girls say 'girl power,' that's not girl power. Mary Katherine Gallagher is girl power!" says Shannon, laughing.

"This place ages you," sighs Cheri Oteri. "We are all competing to get something on that show--girls, guys, writers, everyone. Sundays, I treat myself as if I'm sick. It's so physically exhausting." After a jeremiad about the rigors of her job, her lips curl into a warm grin. "I'm very lucky."

Oteri grew up in Philadelphia, apprenticed with the Groundlings and in 1995 auditioned for SNL. "I'm telling you, I was like, 'Someday I can tell my kids that I auditioned for Saturday Night Live."' Her gaze is gentle and curious. She locks into character voices. Suddenly, it's Barbara Walters: "I went horseback riding with Saddam Hussein last weekend. He's crazier than a crackhouse whore." Then she is Arianna, the Spartan cheerleader (now the subject of several fan-created Web sites), then Debbie Reynolds, then Colette Reardon, the twitchy pill popper on the sunny edge of madness.

"I always wanted to do a character who was barely holding it together, with a smile, lipstick askew," muses Oteri. "I love people who triumph over adversities. Maybe I felt like that growing up. Not fitting in. Not good enough. So, not realizing it, I'd stare at people and drink in their personalities. I used to study people." The result? She can spoof the misfit without mockery.

"There are lots of ways to get laughs," says Michaels. "But to get laughs with honor is much harder. All three of these women are honorable."

Live, from New York....

"I went horseback riding with Saddam Hussein last weekend. He's crazier than a crackhouse whore."