Liz Patrick won her third Emmy in 2025 for directing the “Saturday Night Live 50th Anniversary Special.” It was a massive, double-sized show filled with celebrity guests, returning sketches and musical performances.
“I came off of Season 50 and, after doing the 50th anniversary special, I was like, OK, nothing will ever be that hard again,” Patrick told TheWrap. “Walking into this season, we had a lot of new cast members, we had some sophomore cast members that were starting to peak, and I really think this was a strong year that could’ve gone either way.”
TheWrap asked the “SNL” director if putting together the fast-paced weekly show — ordering note cards and managing time — got any easier after cresting the 50th anniversary hill. She held a long pause before giving a response.
“No,” she replied with a laugh.
It wasn’t Lorne Michaels‘ iconic sketch show that got Patrick, a Boston University grad, to move to New York City. She first moved there after connecting with a fellow BU alum who said there might be a job for her at MTV if she ever lived in the city. This led to a part-time job with MTV which eventually became a full-time gig, something Patrick described as a sort of graduate school for stepping into TV production.
“It gave me a great foundation to direct shows like ‘SNL,’” she said. “There wasn’t a lot of money. You had to figure out how to do things, make them look grand, and we had a lot of fun doing it. It was such a fun place to work. I don’t think anything exists today like it.”
It was there that she met Beth McCarthy-Miller, who transitioned from directing on “The Jon Stewart Show” to becoming one of the five directors that preceded Patrick at “SNL.” “Watching somebody’s career path at such a young age, I was like, Oh, if I can do something like that when I’m older, that’d be really cool,” Patrick said.
Patrick became “SNL’s” sixth studio director in 2021, sharing the duty with previous director Don Roy King for a half season. Like many of the craftspeople on the long-running sketch show, Patrick’s week mostly starts on Wednesday night after read-through (though she will sit in on Monday’s pitch meeting and chat with writers early in the week). This creates quite the juggling act every week from Wednesday night to the Saturday live show — a load Patrick said doesn’t really get easier with time.
“I read anywhere from 35 to 45 sketches, and I just start writing my notes: If I need a specialty camera, a choreographer, a stunt person, how I see in that instant when I’m reading it. I might even drop a quick ground plan of how I see the set, how I see the action in the set, just to give myself a head start,” she said. “The day is so long, and you have to have that information as you go throughout the day.”
One of the biggest episodes for Patrick in Season 51 came late in the year, when Olivia Rodrigo pulled double duty as host and musical guest. As Patrick directs both the live sketches and the musical performances, this kind of host brings an extra layer of complication to consider as she often has to look for ways to lighten their load.
Despite this double-duty stint being only her first time hosting “SNL,” Patrick said Rodrigo came into 30 Rock like she was already a pro.
“She knows what it takes to put on a show. She’s used to moving quickly,” Patrick said. “I think sometimes you get a host in there and you do move quickly and it’s just like we don’t want to scare them. Obviously, I always want to go at the pace of the host, but we are a fast-pace show, and to get all the rehearsals in we do move quickly. With Olivia, I was excited because she’s young, she’s vibrant, she’s the pop culture of today.”
There were a lot of moving parts for Patrick and her crew to go through in this episode, which featured a live musical performance sketch, the debut of Aziz Ansari as Kash Patel and more. The director said she appreciated the opportunity to lean into some of her core cast’s personalities for certain sketches, like Ashley Padilla’s physical comedy in “My Ex” or Andrew Dismukes’ sense of humor in “Rasta Driver” (“Who knew Andrew could do reggae rap?”).
“It’s exciting. It’s almost a little bit in a way like a flashback to old ‘SNL’ days when we had recurring characters that would come through like Sally O’Malley or Mary Katherine Gallagher. I love when we have sketches that really highlight a cast member and it’s like their piece,” she said.
The episode also had a big set piece in the sketch “Edge of Destiny.” Emulating an ’80s soap opera, this sketch saw a number of cast members fall down a massive staircase, an effect achieved by turning the stairs on their side, rotating the camera to match and moving the front railing and back wall to simulate motion.
“Steve Higgins, one of our producers, had the idea of how the staircase should work,” she said. “He was explaining it to me, and I was like, ‘Oh, I think we can do this.’ I built a little crude model out of paper and a water bottle to show my production designer.”
Patrick noted that the sketch got a big pop when Rodrigo added a bit of extra flair to her own climactic tumble, an element she added herself during rehearsal.
“Each cast member went through and we went, ‘OK, Olivia do you want to try it?’ and she started off with a little somersault in,” she said. “It’s so much fun with a host that wants to go for it.”
