Tuesday night on November 8, 2016, the staff started working on sketches in the evening, as it became increasingly apparent that they would need to recalibrate for the upcoming week. They began working on some sketches based on the assumption that Hillary Clinton would win the presidential election. Tuesday night is when the writing for Saturday Night Live takes place.
Kelly Chris stated that there was no way to know what the country would feel like on Friday or Thursday, let alone on Saturday. The famous SNL cast dealt with the delayed opening cold episode, which would set the tone. They were scrambling to handle the emotions of their viewers and the country, knowing that Donald Trump would become the forty-fifth president in the college electoral. The writers knew this.
Kate McKinnon, while singing a song portraying Clinton, also raised questions and spoke about the pain of the ongoing election results, which started the idea of some women in the cast addressing the audience. Just trust what you want to put out there. If it feels like something true or real at this moment, it doesn’t matter if it’s funny. Some of the writers took that idea and put it out there during the week that Dave Chappelle hosted the show.
On Thursday in November, it was revealed that Leonard Cohen, the songwriter and singer-songwriter, had passed away in his sleep three days earlier. The writers of SNL had already been toying with the idea of having Kate McKinnon perform Cohen’s celebrated composition “Hallelujah,” but the executive producer and creator of SNL, Lorne Michaels, felt concerned that it might be too somber.
The song “Hallelujah” by Jeff Buckley, which was first introduced to the world in his 1994 version, was not usually included with a stumbling verse across SNL staffers, as they described it. Since the initial release of the song on Various Positions album in 1984, different lyrics and multiple configurations of verses had been utilized. Sarah Schneider and Kent Kelly, writers, started frantically listening to as many covers of “Hallelujah” as they could find to research and discover the different interpretations.
Even though I did everything wrong, I will still stand before the Lord with a song on my lips. I didn’t come to fool you, I told you the truth. I learned to touch, so I couldn’t feel it much; it wasn’t the best, but I did my best.
The country would feel the song “Hallelujah” as too sad and too defeated, given the raw emotion of this moment. Even though Hillary’s character hadn’t actually written these lines, they were still familiar to her. In fact, she described “Hallelujah” as the most beautiful song she had ever written. McKinnon, who was inspired by my book, sent them a verse. The directors of the upcoming documentary, “Journey, a Song Cohen, Leonard Hallelujah,” Dayna Goldfine and Schneider, told me that they felt this book was a perfect distillation of what we wanted to say. It really felt like a July 1st in theaters.
In this way, they opened the show with a song that had never been almost performed before, even though they immediately knew. Kate McKinnon sat at the piano and started playing the song “Hillary”. The three writers and McKinnon went down to set and started rehearsing less than twenty-four hours before the live Saturday Night show. The official show was now on Saturday morning at one o’clock.
McKinnon expressed, “It revolves around affection, and how affection can be challenging but ultimately rewarding.” “And at that particular moment, when emotions ran high for people across the country, regardless of their stance, I had a sudden realization about this verse. It was a moment filled with astonishment and intense emotions, and I comprehended it from a fresh perspective.” “Until then, I had always interpreted ‘Hallelujah’ within the framework of a romantic connection, much like the majority of us.”
It will always be worthwhile and that it’s valuable, but the implementation has been lengthy and challenging and we’re still simply attempting to perfect it. That all individuals are formed equal, and that’s the most exquisite concept in the world, I suddenly comprehended it as, like, the adoration of this notion that is America. She began to shed tears before she proceeded.
The thing that was great,” said Sublette, “was the acknowledgement that we’re not where we want to be, but we’re also not going anywhere and we have the desire to move on and the realization of the nuanced layers of ‘Hallelujah,’ a song that beautifully captures the struggle, triumph, and sorrow of both real-life and spiritual yearning.”
“That’s alright.’ There was no sense of finality to it; it felt like a bummer where no one was there. The song didn’t end in a way that felt sad, but rather it felt like a journey of grieving. It’s like the song takes you on a journey where you feel it eight times, singing ‘hallelujah’ at the end. It also feels joyous, but at the same time, it’s like a song about sadness or grief. And it’s a journey that a lot of people can relate to. We wanted to acknowledge the sadness in the air, but we didn’t want it to be terrible. Everything is so sad. This sucks. ‘Wow, like, we just want to come out and say it,” added Kelly. The tone that we wanted to set was that.
“Let’s descend and observe this moment,” we were like, we were in a place where one would monitor it. You will see it a thousand times just from checking your cards or sketching. You are usually running to the next thing, so it is very rare to go down to the floor and stand to watch a live sketch that you wrote. It’s so busy all the time and you’re always running around. Kelly said, “Once in a while, when you’re at the show, you don’t often get the chance to watch something open and cold.” The writers gathered on the floor of Studio 8H at NBC’s Saturday Night Live in New York City on November 12th at 11:30 p.M.
“You should never surrender,” she exclaimed, “blinked, and turned towards the camera, tears shimmering in her eyes, and,” “Hallelujah” of edit three-verse a performed flawlessly (she mentioned that she was primarily focused on not making mistakes in the piano accompaniment) McKinnon, dressed in a white pantsuit and wearing Hillary Clinton’s iconic wig.”
Schneider stated, “During the show, there was an overwhelming sense of optimism, resolve, and reverence, which created a sense of progress. Although she had the option to sing the song with tears and distress, she chose to express her thoughts and firmly believed that we required a message of ‘What comes after?’ This was entirely Kate’s doing.”
It was a stunning moment, in which a tribute was simultaneously paid to the revered songwriter whose death shed light on the crisis in the country. Kate had been on this journey with Schneider, becoming a person who had really become a part of this year-long journey. Hillary, who had written a very personal tribute to us, had been representing them on the show for many months, honoring their relationship with a female writer. The performance on Saturday Night Live captured the horror and shock of the nation, without wallowing in self-pity. It was a truly captivating three-minute performance.
The most stunning occurrence was when Lena Dunham tweeted about it; Twitter had a predictable ecstatic response, and even before the show finished, NBC posted a clip of the “Hallelujah” performance on social media. The episode earned the highest ratings in almost four years for the show.
“During my time at the exhibition,” stated McKinnon, “I received the greatest feedback regarding this particular aspect.”
According to Daniel Fienberg, a Hollywood Reporter writer, Kate McKinnon’s portrayal of Hillary Clinton on SNL was not the best. Although she attempted to capture the haunting essence of Cohen’s song, her impression of Hillary didn’t really please the team.
“It was almost too flawless” it was almost too flawless coming directly from Cohen and through McKinnon, but coming directly from Cohen and through McKinnon, you’d have thought that verse was too explicit, but I don’t even know how she accomplished that so skillfully,” he wrote, adding that he watched the “Hallelujah” performance three times before continuing with the rest of the episode, McKinnon’s voice was slightly trembling as she sang, if SNL had been reimagining the song to speculate on Clinton’s most personal, internal response to her election defeat, you’d have thought that verse was too explicit, but I don’t even know how she accomplished that so skillfully.
The former secretary of state expressed, “And she remained seated while playing ‘Hallelujah’–that was challenging, that was truly difficult.” Hillary Clinton herself acknowledged in a 2017 appearance on The Tonight Show, “I desire to possess her skill. She is simply an incredible individual,” as tears welled up while observing McKinnon’s rendition.
After this crazy week, what is your course of action? However, perhaps we impose that burden on ourselves and there was an immense amount of stress. It could be misconstrued if you uttered something incorrect. “And if you uttered something incorrect, you felt compelled to express everything,” he remarked. “There were numerous individuals observing and we had numerous thoughts we wanted to convey, and with a subtle feeling of awe, Chris Kelly reflected on the choice to depend solely on “Hallelujah” for the post-election cold open.
It shouldn’t have been that way because it has never been more than that. We tried to make the song sweeter than it actually was in retrospect, and we watched it live and then.
The book “The Holy or Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of “Hallelujah”” was published in 2012 by Alan Light under the Atria imprint of Simon & Schuster in paperback edition.
On June 7th, a new updated version of Light’s story will be published. It is a testament to the musical work, now one of the most performed pieces in the history of rock ‘n’ roll, and how it has continued to weave its way through American pop culture over time. Featuring newly-minted historical moments, such as the Live Night Saturday rendition chronicled above Cohen’s death in 2016. The book, Broken or Holy: The Alan Light Chronicles, brings curious readers into the spread of what became Cohen’s most influential song, first published back in 2012.