Saturday Night Live: 44th Season Premiere * River City Belle

Attending SNL was a surreal experience. The show met and exceeded my expectations.

After receiving our tickets ten days in advance of the show, we quickly made our travel arrangements. Our email from SNL gave us detailed instructions to attend the taping. Pro- Tip: If your attending, show up 30 min before the time listed on the SNL email.

Upon arriving at the NBC Studios, we were escorted through Security to a holding area and check-in table. We waited in the holding tank for 45 minutes. The room was comfortable and displayed vintage images from SNL shows. Once you enter this space, you are not able to take video or film footage. NBC is very strict about cell phone usage in the studio.

The check-in table will provide you with your tickets and an assigned number. This assigned number will eventually determine your seat in the studio. For us, our number sent us to the upper level of the studio for filming. Our seats were perfectly centered in the top section and allowed us to view all four stages. Yes, there are four stages in the SNL studio! The lower level seats are the seats you traditionally see during the live broadcasts.

You’ll be in your seat for the broadcast around 11 PM. Once in the studio, it’s clear that the real star of the show is the SNL crew. They effortlessly create each sketch scene in moments. We anxiously awaited the start of the show and made guesses on what the different sketches for the show would entail. While waiting for the show to begin, the SNL band began to play to keep the crowd entertained.

SNL traditionally starts the show with a cold opening; our shows cold opening featured a surprise player… MATT DAMON! Woah, that took us by surprise. Eventually, our guest host Adam Driver appeared on the stage to deliver his monologue. Adam did a great job as a guest host. We were disappointed that there were very few Kylo Ren skits, but the experience was still worth every moment. For our show, every other skit was pre-recorded. But, thanks to monitors in the studio we were able to comfortably watch the skits as they appeared on the home audiences’ screens.

The musical guest for our show was Kanye West, and well seeing Kanye dancing in a Perrine bottle was one of the oddest things I’ve witnessed in my adult life. Like really, it was hilarious!! As the show was wrapping up, Kanye well.. he pulled a Kanye. I’m sure you heard all about it!

But, just when we thought we had spotted every celebrity, we’d encounter for the evening… Wendy Williams and her family walked right by us leaving the studio. And, as we were leaving, we spotted Arianna Grande.

As we were ushered out of the studio, we exited through the NBC store and provided with a coupon to use in the store. The experience of attending SNL was incredible. If you’re ever given the opportunity, you should attend one too.