Alan Zweibel
Appearances
Fresh Air
'SNL' Turns 50: Aykroyd, Franken, Zweibel & Lovitz
Well, there was once a sketch... called Hire the Incompetent, that I believe Rosie Schuster wrote, where Gilda appeared with that wig. And Hire the Incompetent was interviews with three people who were clearly too incompetent
Fresh Air
'SNL' Turns 50: Aykroyd, Franken, Zweibel & Lovitz
to have any job anywhere and it was successful and months later i was having dinner with gil and i said you know remember that character i said why don't we give her a name put her in a weekend update and why not give her uh... you know let her be a consumer advocate not unlike and there was a local uh... abc newswoman called roseanne scammerdella in new york at the time i said not unlike roseanne scammerdella
Fresh Air
'SNL' Turns 50: Aykroyd, Franken, Zweibel & Lovitz
And Gilda said, well, okay, can we call her Roseanne, Roseanne Adana? And I said, why? And what Gilda had done, remember that song, the name game, you know, Johnny, Johnny, Bobani? Gilda started singing it, and if you sing it with the name Roseanne, somewhere in there, Roseanne, Roseanne Adana comes out. And I go, okay, fine, let's name her that.
Fresh Air
'SNL' Turns 50: Aykroyd, Franken, Zweibel & Lovitz
So every week she would get a letter from a Richard Fader from Fort Lee, New Jersey, who's my brother-in-law. He was my best friend growing up. Then he married my sister and it was my way of saying hi to him every week. So we made him the letter writer.
Fresh Air
'SNL' Turns 50: Aykroyd, Franken, Zweibel & Lovitz
And basically we lapsed into a formula where we would take a celebrity and we would take something topical and we would put the two together and come up with sweat bowls at the end of Dr. Joyce Brothers' nose or... nasal hairs from Bo Derek or whatever we did.
Fresh Air
'SNL' Turns 50: Aykroyd, Franken, Zweibel & Lovitz
She was a great writer, undisciplined in that she wouldn't sit down at a typewriter and stay up all night, you know. However, whenever we would write together, it was usually by virtue of me taking a legal pen and a pen and the two of us going to a restaurant.
Fresh Air
'SNL' Turns 50: Aykroyd, Franken, Zweibel & Lovitz
And I would basically interview her on whatever we were going to do that week, whether it was Roseanne, Roseanna Dana, Emily Littella, any of the other things that I'd written for her. I'd say, okay, how do you feel about this? What would Roseanne say about that?
Fresh Air
'SNL' Turns 50: Aykroyd, Franken, Zweibel & Lovitz
That was, yeah. That was based on a character that... It was a nanny that was very, very important in Gilda's upbringing. Her name was Dibby and spoke like that. The character first appeared in a sketch that either Franken and Davis wrote or Rosie Schuster and wasn't named as such. And then we started using it more and more.
Fresh Air
'SNL' Turns 50: Aykroyd, Franken, Zweibel & Lovitz
Then ultimately Gilda and I hooked into it and put her in Weekend Update and the character evolved into what it was.