As Saturday Night Live celebrates its 50th year on television, many of its stars were discovered 3,000 miles away in a small comedy theatre along Melrose Avenue. Jonathan Gonzalez reports for the NBC4 News at 4 p.m. on Feb. 14, 2025.
As Saturday Night Live celebrates its 50th year on television, many of its stars were discovered 3,000 miles away in Los Angeles.
One of the most well-known spots that continues to propel talented comedians to the national stage is the Groundlings Theatre and School on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles.
“To find your community here is to find a golden ticket, it seems. And to me, that's what the Groundlings is,” said Michael Churven, a member of the Groundlings main company. “It's made up of a group of people that are just really great collaborators. They love to look at each other in the eye, listen to each other, build sketches, put them up, and then audiences just get looped into that process.”
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Churven gave NBC4 a rare tour of the historic theatre and backstage, where famous SNL alumni once roamed the halls, including Laraine Newman, John Lovitz, Phil Hartman, Will Ferrell, Maya Rudolph and Kristin Wiig, just to name a few.
Much like SNL, the Groundlings also just celebrated its 50th year.
“It’s like medicine. It really is. It’s a good wake up call that we just have to be able to laugh at things sometimes,” Churven said. “Most of what you try out here is not funny, you know, but that's the process.”
It’s the process that has long attracted SNL creator Lorne Michaels and his team to the Groundlings stage, hoping to spot its next breakout star.
“It's very rigorous. The training is extremely rigorous, the show process is very rigorous,” Churven said. “When you get pulled into something like SNL, for example, you've had this boots-on-the-ground experience of knowing how and when to deliver.”
And even for the lucky few who have been chosen to star on SNL, the Groundlings is never far away.
Many alumni have been known to return to the small stage where they received their big break.
“I mean, Kristen Wiig loves to go and improvise with us whenever she can,” Churven explained. “It’s a community of people that have a special kind of appreciation for what they enjoy doing. And when you find that, you can't let it go. So I think that's the thing that I enjoy most about it is just the family that you create here.”
On March 8th, the Groundlings is hosting its annual open house, with free shows and $10 classes.
The public is encouraged to attend, because after all, who you see on any given night could one day be someone you watch on Saturday nights.
