1985 was a dangerous time to be the shows first openly gay cast member.
Terry Sweeney was up for the challenge.
Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Before Bowen or Kate, and beforeTotinosorGays in Space,there was Terry Sweeney.
It was a groundbreaking casting thatSNLrarely crows about no surprise given that he was fired after one season.
In the years after, Sweeney could not get booked as an actor.
But, while recent years have seen ameteoric rise in queer comedy, Sweeney remains a swept-aside part ofSNLhistory.
I really was gay out there and proud, he says, looking back now.
It was the part I was supposed to play.
I lovedThe Jackie Gleason Show.
In terms of sitcoms, I likedTheBeverly HillbilliesandBewitched.
Endora was basically a drag queen, so everyone was fascinated by that.
It was a spoof ofTouched by an AngelcalledTouched by an Atheist.
Id go, God, gay people are so funny.
You knew they were gay?Yeah.
Although they never said it.
Ive heard that Paul Lynde would get fan letters from women who were in love with him.So did Liberace.
In what world was that?
But you could recognize them?Oh, yeah.
The gaydar starts going, Woo-woo-woo.
I was amazed that the women never went, I wasted throwing my bra at Liberace.
Although maybe they didnt, since he might wear it.
People would kick my books, shove me in the lockers.
I was one of those gay people.
They may not have known Liberace was gay, but they certainly knew I was.
If I had my bag for school, theyd go, Oh, fag bag.
Terryrhymes withfairy,Sweeneyrhymes withweenie.
I have Jason, which very easily became Gayson!
Theyre not that smart, but they think of things like that.
But my thought was,What is their problem?I never went,What ismyproblem?Much healthier!
Other gay people, later on, would jump out a window.
I thought,Oh, no, Ill pushyouout.
Then I got to college, and everything was kind of fluid.
People werent openly hostile to me, but youre cautious.
I thought,Well, thats nice.
Thank you for the guiding hand, which was going up in my shorts.
WasThe Boys in the Bandout yet?Boys in the Bandwas right before that.
What a horror show!
That scared the shit out of me, all those mean mind games.
I was like,What is this, my future?AndCruising!
Who knows if you live or die?
For my junior year, I went to Spain and to a bar called Los Stones.
Guys would sit in each others laps and kiss.
So after I graduated from college in 1973, I went into disco.
I was at Lizas birthday party!
Was that your first interaction with drag?Unless you countCarol Burnett Harvey Korman loved to get dressed up.
But yes, there were a lot of drag queens around at that time.
I met a few Village People.
I actually spent a night with the Indian.
Now theyre straight, apparently.
I would see drag, and I loved it.
I thought it was so exciting and fun, and a little scary sometimes.
How did you get started in comedy?I started at Catch a Rising Star and other little places.
I was making up a comedy act.
I did Cabfinger, about being addicted to cabs at that time, the subway was horrifying.
I was trying out stand-up in little places, but to very straight audiences.
When you were performing for straight audiences, were you trying to act butch?I was always myself.
I never butched it up.
In New York, the whole cabaret scene and the tiny club scene were full of gay people.
But the actual stand-up world, I thought,Hmmm, thats going to be a long haul.
I was more comfortable doing performance art and improv.
People have always liked me well enough onstage.
It was more that I had to work as a waiter half the time.
You wrote onSNLduring season six, during Lorne Michaelss hiatus, when Jean Doumanian was in charge.
I said, Maybe I should apply.
He goes, Dont bother.
Its the last day.
So I went home, I locked myself in my apartment, and I wrote 20 sketches.
I mustve had about ten pots of coffee.
To the right of me was a deli.
I went into the deli and ordered sandwiches, coleslaw, potato salad, and drinks.
I went up to the security guard, and I went, Lunch forSaturday Night Live!
He goes, Im not bringing lunch up.
Do your job, for Gods sake.
I said, Oh, sorry.
Its my first day.
I went up, and everybody was waving me in.
I knocked on Jean Doumanians door, and she said, I didnt order any lunch, honey.
I said, I know, Im a writer.
Ive written all these sketches.
And I ran out.
For two weeks, I heard nothing.
Then Jean Doumanian called me up and said, Hi, did you write all those 20 sketches?
And I said, Yes.
And she said, What do you do?
I said, Im a waiter.
And she said, Starting Monday, youre a writer onSaturday Night Live.
I was hired just like that.
No agent, no connections, just that trick off the street, and I got hired.
Gilbert Gottfried was a very brilliant but odd person.
Jean Doumanian kept going, I think I need to put you on the show.
She was studying me, but then they fired her.
It was a whole big deal.
How did you meet your husband, Lanier?We met in 82.
I was performing stand-up and performance art, and he was too.
We kind of met through friends who were all performers at that time in New York.
You just floated around doing everything improv, performance, art, blah, blah, blah.
Then, I joined his group, the Whitlach Family, as a Christian song stylist named Kitty Kincaid.
They would spot me in the audience and say, Oh, look, its Kitty Kincaid!
I was not like,Oh, Im going to perform in drag.
I never thought about it like that.
We did crazy stuff.
We could toss them.
But then we started getting booked.
At that time, Id given up my apartment.
And then that fell apart.
They said, Were only going to use stars.
And I didnt have money from that show, since I hadnt gotten a paycheck.
I wrote Lorne, I bought these flowers.
I know youre in L.A. looking forSaturday Night Livetalent.
If you do not pick me, I would expect to be reimbursed for these.
Have a nice day.
And I signed it Connie Chutzpah.
I was the first person he hired for season 11.
Did you ever play Connie on the show?I could not get Connie on that show.
They did not like her.
The writers were not happy about me doing drag.
They would sit there at read-throughs and just not laugh.
They would intentionally do that?Oh, yes.
I mean, thats part of it.
You want your sketch to get on.
You may deliberately not laugh at somebody elses sketch because you want yours to be funniest.
Its not one big happy family.
Nobody went by my office and yelled, Fag!
Instead, it was, I dont really have any ideas for you.
We need a mailman in the sketch; we dont need a gay mailman.
I would have two or three sketches.
They just didnt write for me.
Carol Leifer was the only one whod write for me.
And Al Franken didnt have any problems.
I hadnt felt that way since junior high school.
I went to memorials, burials, funerals.
It was very, very tough.
I was emotional during that time.
There was a lot of death around the gay community, and no one was talking about it.
I was in this parallel universe where I was mourning peoples lives and my friends.
Im supposed to come in, and heres people not wanting to write a fucking sketch for me.
I was like,Fuck you.
I might have gotten bras and girdles thrown at me.
And at that time, it was, They brought it on themselves because theyre all sex maniacs.
I couldnt lie I would add to the shame.
Years later, whos going to remember the sketches youre in?
And nobody had ever said it before without shame.
Those boys had never seen drag.
She said, Terry, honey, Im Black.
Im from the projects.
Im not going to add lesbian on top of that.
We would console each other and laugh about stuff, but it was tough.
How was it when Chevy Chase hosted?He fought with everybody.
Weve all had a Chevy experience.
Do you know what I mean?
I walked out of the room.
What specifically made you walk out?I was very excited to meet him.
It was the first time I met an old cast member.
Then, he asked who the gay one was, and I put my hand up.
He said, Ive got an idea for a sketch.
We say you have AIDS and start weighing you throughout the show, and you keep losing weight.
The whole room was aghast.
And so I just got up and walked out.
But you sound so kumbaya about it now.
I dont understand how you got there.It was 1985!
I moved on, because thats his mental problem.
It had nothing to do with me.
Lorne made him come and apologize to me.
It was the kind of apology that women hate that men make.
Its almost a joke, its such a cliche.
Last year, we did thosecover shoots withSNLalums, and you two were at the same one.
What was that shoot like?I thought it was going to be terrible if I ran into him.
I went,What am I doing at the same shoot as him?But you know what?
Hes much older and teeter-tottery.
Someone was helping him get into the shoot, so I think he had some health challenges.
I walked past him and he didnt recognize me.
I never spoke to him once.
We dont know much about Danitra.
What was she like?Danitra was the sweetest, smartest, kindest person.
She was my one real friend in the cast.
She would have her little tiny pile of sketches that she wrote too.
She would have to write everything for herself as well?Yeah.
It always felt likeYoure keeping us both from what we can do.We were contained.
What drew you to Nancy?I love women like Nancy.
Theres nothing worse than passive-aggressive, and I love snooty, passive-aggressive women.
Shes a version of Endora!
Shes the reason that Ron Reagan ever became a Republican.
Her dad was Republican, and Ron was whatever you wanted him to be.
Ron Jr. hosted the show when I was on, and we got along famously.
And I said, I put fairy dust in every corner of the place!
She comes home and shes like, What have you queens done?
And her son said to me, Youre more like my mother than my mother is.
I was playing her mean and petty and bossing him around.
Thats what the real Nancy was.
He said, Hello, mom, when he passed me in the hall.
He wasnt upset I was doing it.
What was important to you about that character?I said, Everything has to be perfect.
It cant look like I do sloppy drag.
I want her hair perfect.
I want her earrings.
So thats what I did.
There was no help.
You felt like crying.
And that factored into your portrayal?Yeah.
I made it like, Im devoted to this great country of ours!
I showed her picking out china for the White House.
She was hilarious, and people didnt like her.
So she was a great person to play.
She was a great villainess, in a way, but I never totally hated her guts.
I dont go to that place about anybody.
I thought,Youre doing a bad job.
And you know gay people whos doing your hair?They were in show business.
Lorne only saved Jon Lovitz, and we were burnt in the fire.
I said, A nice Black girl, and a nice gay man.
I was really furious.
I threw a fit.
I threw a fit.
I didnt want to do it.
You didnt want to do any more of the show?No.
I said, I wont go in this fire.
I wont do the sketch.
How did you know you were really going to get fired?I just knew.
I just knew because gay people know these things.
The next season started out with Madonna, who hosted your premiere, hosting again.Yes, it did.
And then sheread some horrible apology: Im sorry, well never do what we did last year again.
How did that feel?I thought that was low.
If you want to start over quietly, just let people go and then recast it.
That was unnecessary and cruel.
And then you have Madonna again on it, who actually I was in a lot of sketches with.
Put it on a crawl or something.
Dont have her do it.
Its a slap in the face to you and Danitra, particularly, I think.
They did something groundbreaking, then apologized.We apologize.
Well never do that again.
Well, they didnt for 30 years.
Did you connect with anyone else in the cast?Danitra is number one.
Danitra and I talked every day.
A nice person, though.
He was nice enough to go along with all that Reagan stuff, and I had all the jokes.
With Robert Downey Jr. and Anthony Michael Hall, it felt like a day care.
They had bunk beds in their room.
They were young and high and smoking pot.
Robert Downey Jr. said to me, I used to see auras when I was a kid.
You have the biggest pink aura.
And I said, Well, thank you.
He and Anthony were really inseparable.
Theyd be late sometimes to the set, and youd hear people go, Where are the kids?
When I got called the one bright star, people were mad.
They wouldnt talk to me!
Because theyd go, What is this?
The circus came to town!
We were all over the place.
We were all from different walks of life.
We were not an ensemble that worked together.
We had nothing to say.
Do you giveSNLcredit for hiring you?I still do.
I give Lorne credit for hiring me.
He never did anything homophobic toward me never.
Im sure he had his own pressures from the internet.
After that season, everybody was looking like,Okay, you failed.
We brought you back, and now you failed.
Well, thats the end of you.But I give all the credit for hiring me.
People needed to see a gay person on TV at that moment.
And I kept hearing that over and over.
I got letters and letters from people telling me, Thank God youre doing it.
They just hadnt seen anybody openly gay like that.
And I was doing gay stuff.
Are you bitter, looking back?Well, I was a little bitter, but you know what?
I did a lot of stuff.
In the 90s, was there a sense of community among the gay comics?
I wanted a sitcom.
I cant think of one person who did stand-up and was open.
They were in the closet.
AfterSNL, I started moving toward performance art too.
Everyone was doing something really interesting and smart, but it wasnt stand-up.
How is it in Hollywood now?Now you get into ageism.
Friends called me up one day in California, and somebody said they wanted a Terry Sweeney bang out.
I called the agent and said, This is your lucky day.
Im right here, and guess what?
We want you, but a younger version of you.
What would you want to do now?Im looking for a way that I can express myself again.
I dont want to be in a group of ten other gay people doing my jokes.
One-man shows are hot right now.Id like to do that.
