The Women Behind Saturday Night Live

While they may not be household names like Gilda Radner, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, or Maya Rudolph, odds are if you’re a fan of the early day of SNL, you’ve laughed at their jokes and been entertained by their creative sketches. The early days of SNL, and the first year in particular, featured only three female writers; Marilyn Suzanne Miller, Anne Beatts, and Rosie Shuster. And it’s true, for most those names won’t ring a bell, but they’re largely responsible for making Saturday Night Live the comedy institution it continues to be to this very day, and they’re nothing short of comedy royalty.

As if writing for SNL wasn’t enough to secure her spot as comedy royalty, Miller also wrote for The Mary Tyler Moore Show and the award-winning Lily Tomlin television special, Lily. Among her many SNL contributions, she helped create the Festrunk Brothers (a.k.a. “two wild and crazy guys”) and some of Gilda Radner’s most popular characters. Not to be outdone, Beatts wrote for National Lampoon Magazine in addition to her SNL tenure, which is one of the most respected publications in the world of American comedy. Alongside Shuster, Miller and Beatts helped paved the way for plenty more female writers on the SNL payroll, writers like Tina Fey who would eventually go on to become the show’s first female head writer in 1999, and who is currently one of the biggest names in comedy, male or female.

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There’s Much to Look Forward to in Coming 2 America

Eddie Murphy's beloved 1988 comedy Coming to America was perhaps one of the defining roles of his career, and a fan favorite to this very day. No surprise, then, that fans can barely contain their excitement and anticipation for the upcoming sequel, Coming 2 America, set to be released at the end of the year.

Even Eddie Murphy is excited, and he discussed the film with Ellen DeGeneres while appearing on her show. “I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out,” he told DeGeneres. “A lot of people have this expectation, like people would say to me when they found out I was doing it, ‘Don’t f— that movie up.’ So we’ve gone above and beyond what anybody would think. I’m really, really happy with it.”

The film will also feature an Eddie Murphy trademark: Not only will he be playing the role of Prince Akeem again, but he will be reviving all of the other characters that he played in the film as well, while also adding an “old farmer” character to the mix. Murphy joked: “Every time I do a makeup movie, I always say, ‘This is the last time I’m doing this s—… and then I always wind up back in the makeup chair.”

As fans expected, starring alongside Murphy will be Arsenio Hall and James Earl Jones, and they’ll be joined by Leslie Jones, Tracy Morgan, and Wesley Snipes, with Craig Brewer at the helm, who worked with Murphy on Dolemite Is My Name.

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