Meryl Streep Breaks Character in Hilarious ‘Close Encounter’ Sketch With Kate McKinnon During SNL Debut

When taking part in ‘Saturday Night Live’s funny routines, even the greatest in the business can’t always remain composed.

Meryl Streep made her SNL debut in the ‘SNL50: The Anniversary Special’, appearing in a comedy that also included Aidy Bryant as a psychiatrist and Jon Hamm as a Space Force officer. The extraterrestrial abduction-themed sketch has been a recurrent joke with Bryant and Kate McKinnon. In this scene, Streep portrayed Colleen Rafferty Sr., McKinnon’s character’s mother, smoking a cigarette while sporting a short grey wig and a Hawaiian shirt.

Streep, making a concerted effort to seem serious, made a joke about taking longer than anticipated to use the restroom. She claimed that the same aliens that had kidnapped her daughter and her friends had also kidnapped her, adding in a comical way that the Rafferty girls were constantly attracting “the freaks.” She continued by saying that she had thought her daughter’s father was partially alien for years, but it had turned out that he was simply uncircumcised.

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After McKinnon had already talked about her personal problems in the sketch, Streep laughed and said that she had the same difficulty, referring to her role in Into the Woods. She also joked that she was “wearing nada” underneath her clothes while entertaining the audience with tales of her encounter with the aliens and the subsequent loss of her pants.

The highlight of Streep’s performance came when she burst into laughter as she and McKinnon landed on top of Phil McDermott. The audience laughed when Streep made a lighthearted comment about his family perhaps wishing they had chosen a closed-casket burial in response to the question of who he was.

This was the first time Streep had ever appeared on ‘Saturday Night Live’. She and Martin Short, a former cast member of ‘Saturday Night Live’ who also attended the anniversary special, were said to be dating.

Short’s suspected connection with Streep was hinted at by Amy Schumer, who joked that he might not be available when they attended ‘SNL50: The Homecoming Concert’ in New York a few days prior.

–Farheen Ali