Julia Sweeney Was Retired for More Than a Decade - Did you Notice?

Sounds great to me.

Her one-woman show, "Letting Go of God" was so good I saw it twice.

She is really smart and down to Earth.

She’s one of the most appealing Not Ready for Prime Time Players.I remember laughing pretty hard at some of her skits, including one she performed with the late Luke Perry. She played a horny housewife who made passes at Perry’s handyman character. She was a lot of fun to watch.

Who is she?

She came in at a tough time in late 1990. It was hard to fill the shoes of Nora Dunn and the soon to be departing Jan Hooks. Her one-woman stage shows were supposed to be quite good.

And hell, I thought Pat was funny at the time.

I'm stunned that there were no clips of the Pat sketch shown at the SNL fiftieth last month!

I still think Pat is funny. People need to get the sticks out of their asses.

Shitbag Jill/Joey Soloway went after Sweeney and Pat a few years ago. Everyone knew someone like Pat.

At least according to OP's article (which is from six years ago!) Sweeney's current views on sex/gender wouldn't win her any trans fans either...

No.

On SNL, she showed very limited talent and was a harsh comedown from the brilliance of Nora Dunn and Jan Hooks.

She also was an early sufferer of the Rachel Dratch syndrome — she couldn't really portray different characters because she couldn't modify the tone of her voice. Every character was Julia Sweeney.

I loved her one woman show God Said Ha! I never saw it live but I have the CD recording and still listen to it occasionally. Funny and tragic

It’s not on YouTube but Julia played host of a talk show about stalkers and it was hilarious. Christopher Walken was hosting and Jan came back for one of her guest spots.

I remember seeing her in a sketch during her SNL run playing Jane Pauley, and there was no effort at characterization. She was just Julia Sweeney in a blonde wig.

The men of her era get plenty of much-justified criticism — wet shit in a paper bag is funnier than Spade, Sandler, and Farley — but Sweeney got away with a lot of bad/lazy habits that plagued the show for years.

Fuck, do I miss Jan Hooks.

IMHO Jan Hooks was one of the best comedic actresses of all time. She was brilliant and so funny in everything she did. And she could rock a Southern accent like nobody's business. I'm sorry she had so many personal problems.

Her one women shows about her shit-canning religion out of her life are truly great.

Farley was funny.

[quote]Sweeney's current views on sex/gender wouldn't win her any trans fans either...

Just because you're an Athiest doesn't mean you can't be profoundly stupid. Just look at Bill Maher.

Anyway, Pat was one of the dumbest recurring sketches the show has ever had. And that's pretty much the only thing she did that was worthwhile on the show.

r16, I love Jan too. She was from Georgia, so she didn't need to work too hard on the accent.

Wait - didn't she and her brother and her parents all have cancer and she was taking care of them herself?

Or was that before she moved? I know she went through hell for a long time and did comedy pieces about it.

It sounded like forced retirement due to all of that - and then she took some time off to raise a child.

That article is from 2019 - 6 years old.

Sweeney and Melanie Hutsell were not the most versatile on the show but they were also not given the adulation of Sandler and Farley whose big thing was just being loud.

If anybody, Ellen Cleghorne could be funny and had potential but she was reduced to popping up for a minute once a week.

Melanie Hutsell was an odd one because for about ten minutes, she was one of the hottest things on the show. Her Jan Brady was a big hit, and some of her other stuff, like the sorority girls and even her Tori Spelling had a moment. But like with Sweeney and her Pat phenomenon, the show was way too testosterone-driven in that era for them to grow.

I love Hutsell but part of her problem was that her impersonations/characters were all very similar. Her Tori Spelling wasn't very far off from the Tri Delt sorority girl and they all had the same breathy Jan Brady voice and curled lip sneer. I loved them all but I can also understand why she fizzled out quickly.

Someone upthread mentioned Sweeney's voice and it's true she pretty much always sounded the same no matter who she was playing. She has a warm, likeable quality but SNL isn't really the best outlet for that. It pretty much relegated her to wife/mom/co-worker parts

I'd also note that both women were on in an era where male cast members were increasingly getting all the focus and also playing lots of female parts. Putting Chris Farley in a dress for laughs was a pretty regular occurrence. As a woman on the show it must be difficult to compete with that

I had a dog named Sweeney

I read an interview where Julia said Jan was very nice to her. She also implied Victoria was sweet but dumb as a box of rocks.

Julia was also close friends with Brynn Hartman. Unlike Jan, I guess Brynn didn’t see her as a threat to her marriage.

Sweeney is still active as a speaker and podcast guest, but she's basically the polar opposite of a born-again Christian. Is that a Born-Again Atheist?

Sweet merciful crap, does she go on about her irreligious life! It's the entirety of her comedy schtick now! 101 jokes about atheism! And more for the ride home!

She used to have actual heart and talent in her work. Now it's just the tired ramblings of someone who ditched Jesus and REALLY wants you to know it repeatedly.

Sweeney had a redemption arc on Work In Progress, filmed in Andersonville/Edgewater in Chicago. She played herself (and they had her married to a very normal-acting Weird Al Yankovic in real life, which was funny in itself) and she discussed her sorrow at pat hurting the feelings of the lead character, who is rather Pat-like. I liked her performance and LOVED the show.

To be fair, she was most likely raised Irish/Catholic so she has a lot to get off her chest.

It was hard to follow in the shoes of Jan Hooks and Nora Dunn. They were some of the best female cast members ever. And yeah, SNL was male oriented and more sophomoric than ever in that time. Sweeney left/was let go before Lorne Michaels overhauled the cast in 1995, right?

I thought Pat was funny. I did. I came out around that time and met all kinds of people with all kinds of viewpoints. To me, “it’s time for androgyny” was a rallying cry for the times and wasn’t really meant to piss people off.

Love her as Anne Hodges in Frasier. Hodges was so annoying.

Everyone loved Pat and it wasn’t even sort of controversial at the time. No one thought it was offensive.