Maya Rudolph's Partner Documented This Backstage SNL Reunion for Amy Poehler's Episode
The former cast member learned that her partner, One Battle After Another director Paul Thomas Anderson, doesn't always get the shot.
Maya Rudolph did something she had never done in Season 51 of Saturday Night Live: She watched the show.
In an interview on Late Night with Seth Meyers the LOOT star and former cast member shared her experience of attending the October 11 episode, hosted by friend and former colleague Amy Poehler. Viewers at home didn't know that Rudolph and Will Forte were backstage during Poehler's episode.
Seth Meyers and Tina Fey also made guest appearances that night, so Rudolph decided to stop by to watch with her partner Paul Thomas Anderson. In person, in Studio 8H.
"I just showed up," Rudolph told Meyers.
"Had you ever just showed up before?" Meyers asked.
"No," she said. "I've actually never 'watched' the show before. That was the first time I've ever watched the show and not been in the show."
She enjoyed a relaxing night in what Meyers called "the Lorne Zone" and got to drink wine while she watched her pals Poehler, Meyers, and Fey reunite on "Weekend Update" for a joke-off.
"It was like, 'Avengers, assemble!'" she said of their reunion, and Meyers pointed out that some of the Avengers were simply backstage, meaning Rudolph and Will Forte.
All five former players — Rudolph, Forte, Meyers, Fey, and Poehler — ruled SNL in the early 2000s. They were all cast members together from 2002, when Forte joined, until Fey's departure in 2006.
RELATED: Saturday Night Live's Season 51 Cast Members: The Full Lineup for 2025-2026
Maya Rudolph's partner Paul Thomas Anderson took a blurry photo of the SNL reunion
"The five of us were together, it was very special," Meyers said. "We wanted to get a picture."
Naturally, they turned to Rudolph's partner, One Battle After Another director Paul Thomas Anderson, who you'd think could take a good photo.
Meyers even sarcastically joked that Anderson was "notoriously bad at taking photos," and he was proven unironically correct by "the best" pic he managed to take. It's almost impressively terrible, as Meyers shows off in the clip above.
"The other ones were worse than this one," Meyers confirmed.
"This one, you can tell there's human beings in the photo," said Rudolph. "It looks like Amy's got that filter on that makes you barf rainbows."
RELATED: Watch Amy Poehler's Saturday Night Live Monologue and Sketches from October 11, 2025
Seth Meyers said returning to SNL was "surreal," despite Late Night filming in the same building
Meyers spoke more about his SNL reunion on the October 21 episode of The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast.
"I cannot tell you how surreal it is to come back and do SNL," he said. "Which is on the physical hallway that I work all week long. It becomes a completely different place on a Saturday. Like, there's literally no familiarity to a place I come every day when an SNL is happening because the vibe is just so different. It's like I have an office above a nightclub during the week and then I go to the nightclub."
"It was super fun," he continued. "Obviously, there was so little for me to do in the best possible way, which was just to show up. I think people were just happiest that we were there."
Meyers said it was "just the weirdest" to have nothing to do in between doing "Weekend Update" at dress rehearsal and then doing it again during the live show.
"You have like three hours that used to be the busiest three hours of my week, just like running and putting out fires," he said. "But that's not my job anymore. Poehler said once, 'Going back to SNL after you're off it is like being a ghost in a house you used to live in.'"
Now that's a haunted house we'd happily visit.
