Bill Hader Explains How a Table Read In-Joke Inspired SNL's "The Californians"
The cast alum's bit with Fred Armisen grew into a hit recurring sketch that even got a 2025 callback in VW's ads.
It turns out "The Californians" existed behind the scenes long before they became a hit Saturday Night Live sketch.
Former cast member Bill Hader, who starred in the recurring sketch as Devin, revealed that it all started with him and Fred Armisen goofing off at work when their boss, executive producer Lorne Micheals, was out of the room.
"You and Fred, as performers, I think immediately had a real chemistry on the show that I think was best illustrated in sketches like 'The Californians,'" where you stopped actually saying real words," Meyers told Hader in the 2016 Late Night with Seth Meyers interview in which Hader shared the lore.
"That sketch came from a bit that Fred and I would do," Hader said. "Usually, when you're on SNL and you'd have a week off, everybody would go to L.A. and take meetings or whatever, and you would come back. And we'd have our table read, and you know how Lorne Michaels is always right on time when we're doing table reads? Actually we'd just be sitting there waiting for, like, 10 minutes for Lorne, and so we would start this bit."
Whether you've been to Los Angeles or you've only seen "The Californians," you know how it goes: Ask someone how they got somewhere, and they'll tell you *exactly* how they got there.
RELATED: Josh Brolin and Seth Meyers Look Back on "The Californians"
"Well dude, I would go down Sunset and then I'd take a left on La Cienega and I'd take that all the way down to Pico, take a right, take Pico, hop on the 10 West, take that all the way down to the beach, then head up the PCH," Hader told Meyers "Californians"-style, morphing into his Devin character.
Hader said the bit went on for "years," and often involved Kenan Thompson and Andy Samberg.
"The Californians" was written by Fred Armisen and James Anderson
"And then one day, before a table read, Fred came up to me and he's like, 'Hey, James Anderson and I took that bit we did and we made it a soap opera,'" Hader said. "And the first time we did it, Fred, during rehearsal and everything, his first line was, 'Hey, what are you guys doing here?' That's how he said it. On the first time on air, he came out and Kristen Wiig and I say our lines, and he goes, 'Hey, whaaaaat are youuu doing here?'"
Hader recalled sharing a look with Wiig, and then losing it.
"I was gone," he said. "If you've seen the tape, I'm laughing through the... Well, I laugh through every freaking sketch."
If you compare the dress rehearsal version and the live version below, you can indeed catch Hader and Armisen laughing through the first moments in dress. In the live version, both can be seen trying not to laugh. Armisen seems to keep it together, while Hader is not so lucky.
The Californians: Stuart Has Cancer (Dress Rehearsal)
The Californians: Stuart Has Cancer
RELATED: STUART! SNL Alums Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig's "Californians" Reunite in New VW Ad
Josh Brolin starred in SNL's first Californians" sketch in 2012
In 2024, Los Angeles native Josh Brolin joined Meyers on Late Night and reminisced about helping to launch such an iconic group of characters on SNL.
"You know that Bill and Fred, they used to do it at the round table. They never actually asked Lorne to do it," he said. "And because I'm the staunch Californian, they were like, 'This is the perfect time to bring it up.'
I'm the only guy that has a different voice than everybody else, 'cause I thought everybody else would [bleep] it up," he continued.
"I do feel bad for, say, Europeans who watch 'The Californians' and think that's how they sound," Meyers said.
"But they do! Apparently, I'm the only one who doesn't know, from California, that we sound like this," Brolin said, in his own version of the voices used in the sketch.
Maybe not every real Californian sounds like that, but you can bet your bleached-blonde hair that they've got a lot to say about traffic.
Watch both versions of "The Californians" from Season 37, Episode 19 above, and stream every season of Saturday Night Live on Peacock anytime.
