Trivia / MADtv (1995)

• Actor-Shared Background: Stephanie Weir, who would frequently do impressions of Anna Nicole Smith, was born on the same day as Anna Nicole Smith, in Texas, albeit Odessa rather than Houston.
• Approval of God: Although there's no way to prove it with her dead, Debra Wilson has claimed that Whitney Houston was a fan of Wilson's celebrated impression of her. ("She didn't take herself too seriously", Wilson says.) Oprah Winfrey, on the other hand, made no secret of her displeasure of Wilson's impression of her, not that it ever stopped her. Tellingly, Wilson has retired her impression of Whitney following her death despite its enduring popularity, but continues to lampoon Oprah upon request.
• Corpsing: Compared to SNL, it may be not-so-prevalent, but the show's definitely had its moments, with Michael McDonald being the undisputed king of making many of his co-stars break.
  • Even Michael McDonald himself breaks character when there is an unscripted event completely out of left field, which can be seen in a Christmas segment where Nicole Parker brought in a pig onto the stage, only for the pig to soil the carpet.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Phil Lamarr makes no secret of his disappointment in the show abandoning its "alternative SNL" idea as early as its second season to just become "diet SNL."
  • Similarly, Ike Barinholtz has expressed frustration at the show's executives' refusal to explore having any identity outside of being a rival to SNL, claiming that it divided its audience in a way that would never favor it and prevented it from developing a voice of its own.
• Cross-Cast Role: Darrell from the "Can I Have Your Number" sketch is a man but played by the female Nicole Randall Johnson.
• Dueling Shows: With Saturday Night Live. While MADtv has its share of fans^note a lot of which are former disillusioned fans of SNL and is considered the longest-running Fox sketch show (and SNL's longest-running rival), Saturday Night Live (for all its flaws, Seasonal Rot, detractors, and controversial moments) came out on top as the edgy, weekend live sketch show with a cast of up-and-coming comedians. Saturday Night Live even has two former MADtv cast members: Jeff Richards (who was on the show from 2001 to mid-2004) and Taran Killam (who stayed from 2010 to 2016)^note Stephnie Weir, Mary Scheer, Jordan Peele, Keegan Michael Key, and Erica Ash auditioned, but were turned down.
• Denied Parody: Alex Borstein has flatly denied that Ms Swan is an old Asian woman, and claims she's based on her grandmother. (The Vancome Lady thinks she's Icelandic; Borstein also parodied Bjork, and inevitably took advantage of the name to put Swan in her famous swan dress.)
  • In a bit of Reality Is Unrealistic, Borstein's grandmother is Hungarian, a European people with a very Asiatic history.
• Executive Meddling: According to Ike Barinholtz, any attempts made by the cast to push the show away from its status as "Fox's SNL" and develop an identity of its own were vetoed by its executives.
• Hostility on the Set: By most reports, there were a lot of tensions between the cast members throughout the show's run:
  • Aries Spears didn't seem to get along with anyone (with the notable exception of Debra Wilson, whom he was often partnered with in sketches), accusing Alex Borstein of racist remarks. In turn, both Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key claimed he was cold to them and oftentimes difficult to work with. The show itself may have been inspired by the goings-on backstage when it had Nicole Sullivan and Spears re-enact (what they claimed to be) an actual TV Guide article reporting tensions between the two of them (the show was known at the time for playing with Kayfabe, including a sketch where Bret Hart flips out while filming a sketch and attacks the cast members).
  • Bobby Lee didn't get along with Michael McDonald or most of his other then-castmates (in McDonald's case he and Lee seems to have made up), though he speaks fondly of Alex Borstein (ironically enough), as well as Will Sasso, Mo Collins and Debra Wilson. One of his castmates who he didn't get along with? Aries Spears. It even extended at one point into each others' podcasts where Lee invited Spears onto his podcast Tiger Belly, only for Spears to coldly rebuff his invite.
  • Bryan Callen from season 1 does not get along with Lee, at all. The fact that he made considerable controversy recently threatening pretty unspeakable things that derailed his own career towards Bobby further cements his own Jerkass status towards people.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: For a time, the only DVDs released were the complete season one set and a compilation special called The Best of Seasons 8, 9, and 10. Despite a preview for the second season DVD, Warner Bros. decided not to release anymore DVDs for the show due to low sales. Shout! Factory picked up the slack and released seasons two, three, and four on DVD, but then stopped for the same reason Warner Bros. did. Don't bother looking for it on television, since Comedy Central stopped airing the show in 2010 (it didn't even air the last couple of seasons [12 to 14], though Canada's Comedy Network aired season 12 before pulling the show) and no other channel has aired it since . YouTube seems to be the only place anyone can find MADtv sketches (albeit ones with Comedy Central station identification bugs or Dutch subtitles^note maybe a few that have Fox or CW station ID bugs {or even station ID bugs from Canada, like the now-defunct CH}, but those are rare), and the iTunes store only has full episodes of the last two seasons available.
  • As of 2020, HBO Max has seasons one to 14 of the show. However, of the 329 episodes (that's the Fox version, the 20th anniversary special, and the short-lived CW revival) that have aired, 114 episodes are missing^note with season six (the 2000-2001 season) missing 19 episodes out of 30 due to rights issues over the celebrity guest stars and musical performances (though the music video parodies and spoken references to songs are still there, unlike what happened with In Living Color when it was released on DVD with the entire fifteenth season being missing), leaving 215 episodes that have cleared.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • Cast member Josh Meyers is the brother of Saturday Night Live cast member Seth Meyers, making this the only time an SNL cast member had a sibling who was a cast member on a rival show.
  • Mo Collins' son appeared in a sketch about wigs.
  • Stephanie Weir's actual husband appears in the "Wedding Video" sketch.
  • A couple of sketches have had Nelson Ascenscio's twin brother and Paul Vogt's twin brother (Peter), making them the only MADtv cast members who have an identical twin brother.
  • In the "Adopted Asian Baby" sketch Bobby Lee's brother Steve plays a fellow baby. Steve Lee also sometimes appears on the sketches where Bobby Lee plays his Asian Casanova Wannabe character, Tank.
• Recycled Script: There are many recurring characters in the show, and some of these characters had scripts with either the same plot/situation or having the character repeat his/her shtick, with only a few variables. This becomes particularly prevalent in the later seasons.
  • Particularly egregious are the Crafty Gal sketches. There are 5 of these sketches, and all feature Denise (Crista Flanagan) and Kendra (Arden Myrin) as two unattractive girls who sell crafts at a booth, and during the process talk about being sexually harassed and/or their willingness to date any man. A man or two will approach them and the sketches end with the girls going home with the man. There is virtually no variation between these sketches with the exception of the men they go home with and the place.
  • Also taking flak for this are Bobby Lee's Bae Sung, Tank, and the Blind Kungfu Master sketches, where their respective characters do the same actions with usually the same ending in different places. This was sort of lampshaded in one of Bae Sung sketches where Tony Soprano (Portrayed by Frank Caliendo) pointed out that saying "hot dog" over and over again is not funny, and proceeded to brutally murder Bae Sung for annoying him.
  • Scripts can also be recycled between different recurring characters. Paul Timberman's Workshop (By Will Sasso) and Wendy Walker's 3 Minute Meals (By Crista Flanagan) are essentially the same shtick: A TV personality tries to demonstrate a task but gets physically injured in the process. This example is interesting given that Crista Flanagan's Wendy Walker character only appeared several seasons after Paul Timberman's Workshop sketches ceased.
• So My Kids Can Watch: A fun variation: Susan Sarandon made a few guest appearances because her kids were huge fans of the show.
• Technology Marches On: An early recurring sketch was "Lowered Expectations", a video matchmaking service for extremely maladjusted individuals. While hilarious, the sketch was a bit...dated in the late '90s due to the rise of the internet and online dating making video services obsolete, and the sketch was quietly retired by the end of the decade.
• Throw It In!: Although MadTV's comedy sketches are taped, even outside of Hilarious Outtakes a few sketches still had the cast members' Corpsing moments left uncut. Mo Collins will occasionally be seen trying to stifle a laugh, and even Michael McDonald was seen corpsing at least twice.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Seth MacFarlane was originally contracted to do cartoon shorts for this show, but backed out in favor of creating his own TV series for FOX. Had MacFarlane taken the offer, he would have created Family Guy for MADtv (1995) before spinning it off into its own show, much like Matt Groening did with The Simpsons on The Tracey Ullman Show. This is why Alex Borstein, a regular on MadTV at the time, was cast as female lead Lois Griffin, again echoing the casting of Tracey Ullman Show regulars Dan Castellaneta and Julie Kavner on the Simpsons shorts.
  • Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele were originally hired with the intention of FOX picking only one of them to be in the next season's cast, but the two had such great chemistry both separately and together that FOX decided to pick them both.
  • Stephnie Weir (the MADtv (1995) cast member known for recurring character Dot^note a mentally unstable girl whose parents abuse her because she's as not smart as her sister and her impression of Anna Nicole Smith) originally auditioned to be a Saturday Night Live cast member. She was passed up on SNL in favor of Rachel Dratch.
    • Jordan Peele also auditioned to be on Saturday Night Live during the hiatus brought on by the 2007-2008 Writers' Guild strike when Lorne Michaels used the time off to find a cast member who could play Barack Obama. Peele and another black male cast member (Donald Glover) were passed up in favor of Fred Armisen (to much controversy) until September 2012, when Jay Pharoah was chosen.
    • Conversely, Cheri Oteri auditioned to be in the original MADtv cast. When the producers chose Nicole Sullivan instead she went over to SNL.
  • According to Joey Diaz, after the first The Sopranos parody sketch blew up, the cast was more than ready to make a second one when Jamie-Lynn Sigler hosted, but someone from the Sopranos production team stopped them.
  Joey Diaz: "She can host, but she ain't doing no fucking sketch", so we canceled the sketch.
  • In 2003, Stacy Hallal pitched what would become Ruby Rocket Private Detective for the show. It was not picked up.

---