The two SNL alums are playing sisters in You Hurt My Feelings.
Louis-Dreyfus, the star of the sitcom, had of course done her own stint onSNLin the 1980s.
“That’s right,” adds Watkins.
Michaela Watkins and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.Bryan Bedder/Getty
“She was the first person I told.
It was very exciting.”
Both Watkins and Louis-Dreyfus had relatively short runs on the long-running comedy show.
Louis-Dreyfus was a cast member from 1982-1985, and Watkins only stayed with the show for the one season.
“I certainly don’t have any desire to have extended my stay there,” says Louis-Dreyfus.
“That was plenty for me.
It was really learning by the seat of your pants.
I was pretty young when I went; I was only 21.
So, I had no idea what I was doing.”
Watkins, however, wishes her exit could have been on her own terms.
“I was there a much shorter time than you were,” she tells Louis-Dreyfus.
“That felt like a very public rejection, you know?
I would’ve liked two more years to have had the chance to not be a new person.
That’s the 12-year-old me needing to scratch that itch and my ego.
But in retrospect, I like that my career is not defined by that.”
“Things happened very fast on the show,” Watkins remembers.
“It was very quick, and I got thrown into a sketch.
“You hadOld Christinehair, not Elaine hair.”
I don’t even remember it.”
Louis-Dreyfus insists it was a good impression, prompting Watkins to do it again on the spot.
Watkins does, but then she turns the tables, asking Louis-Dreyfus to do an impression of her.
“She’s a mumbler,” Louis-Dreyfus remarks, before launching into a spot-on imitation of Watkins.
“I thought about us being siblings,” she says.
“Not playing her, but I thought about us being siblings forever.”
You Hurt My Feelingsis now in theaters.
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