Hilarious Roundtable with Maya Rudolph and Emmy Co-Nominees [Exclusive Video]

Giving gorgeous, serving pretty, they did it live from New York City. And now, they’ve been nominated for an Emmy Award. The “Mother’s Day Monologue” song from the Maya Rudolph-hosted episode of “Saturday Night Live” has been nominated for Best Original Music and Lyrics at the 2024 Emmys, with Eli Brueggemann up for the music, and Rudolph, Auguste White, Mike DiCenzo, and Jake Nordwind recognized for the lyrics. All five nominees recently spoke with Gold Derby for our “Making of ‘SNL’ Mother’s Day Monologue” exclusive panel interview.

Each person received multiple Emmy bids this year, with Brueggemann also nominated for Best Music Direction, Rudolph also nominated for Best Comedy Guest Actress for “SNL,” Best Comedy Actress for “Loot,” and Best Character Voice-Over for “Big Mouth,” and White, DiCenzo, and Nordwind also nominated for Best Variety Writing. Rudolph’s heralded episode aired on Saturday, May 11, just minutes before the start of Mother’s Day 2024, and one week before the Season 49 finale.

“I was so proud of this nomination, honestly,” Rudolph tells us. “This one for me, on a personal level, was so meaningful. This song came out of my brain which, by the way, rarely happens these days. I rarely have an idea and then it gets written. And it was clear. It was as clear as a bell. And I feel like from start to finish, the experience of making it with this group of people was joyful and fun.” She adds, “I think liking the process is so overlooked sometimes and doesn’t always get to happen, so I think that was the proud moment.”

Rudolph came to White with the idea of doing the song in a ballroom-voguing style, with the essences of RuPaul, Madonna, and Beyonce. “It was just so amazing to have that starting point,” White recalls. “It just sprang forth so fully formed. And I think we had so much to choose from. All of these cultures and icons have such an immense body of work. It was just a matter of deciding what we wanted to take from that. What visuals from ‘Renaissance’? What beats? What sounds?” And after hearing Eli’s music, “For us as writers, that was another launch point” for even more ideas.

Usually when DiCenzo works on a monologue, he readily admits, “A lot of times we don’t really have an idea until Monday or Tuesday. And this one, Auguste and Maya had been working prior to the week, which almost never happens. Auguste came into our office and was like, Maya sent some stuff and Eli put something together … it was basically 80% there.” The challenge then became putting together all of the “random fragments of rhymes” because the “foundation was already there.”

“It was a great experience,” Nordwind chimes in. “It just seemed right away like this thing was gonna be special and big. And they wanted already to do it in kind of an interesting one shot as we walked around the stage. I just felt lucky to get to be a part of it. Every now and then you get something like that sort of handed to you. This is something I would have loved seeing [on television], and I get to be a tiny part of helping to bring it to air.”

Brueggemann usually has “two days” to get the music ready for a sketch before Saturday night comes around, however, “In this case, I probably had five or six days, so it was a nice running start this time around,” he reveals. “It’s not just Maya doing the work there — the audience has a rapport with her, and so there’s always an excited energy whenever she’s in the room. It’s really easy to follow. I just have to make sure things don’t move off the rails, and let the comedy do what it needs to do.”

Be sure to watch until the end of the interview for a special treat: Rudolph does a hilarious impression of Molly Shannon‘s Sally O’Malley character when asked about what it means to be a part of a show that’s about to enter Season 50. Here’s the video of the Emmy-nominated “Mother’s Day Monologue” song from “Saturday Night Live”: