Posted in: ABC, NBC, Peacock, TV | Tagged: Julia Sweeney, saturday night live, snl

SNL 50th Anniversary: Julia Sweeney Revisits "Pat" Controversy

SNL 50: Julia Sweeney reflects on the positive and negative feedback received from the LGBTQ+ community for her popular SNL character, "Pat."

Julia Sweeney's most memorable character is still her most controversial after 30 years. Pat Riley, named after the legendary NBA coach and executive, is androgynous by design, and the confusion over identifying the character's gender created uproar in the LGBTQ community despite the popularity. Appearing on ABC's The View as part of the upcoming SNL50 anniversary special featuring the women of SNL, Sweeney spoke on the criticism that Pat was a mockery of trans and nonbinary people.

SNL: Julia Sweeney "Took It to Heart" (Fan Criticism of Pat)

The actress and comedienne, who appeared from 1990-1994, admits she put a lot of "thought" into the Pat criticism, "Much later, there was some criticism of it, but Pat isn't trans or nonbinary. Pat is a man or a woman, but you just don't know which Pat is. That is the joke, but I did understand the criticism, and I took it to heart and thought about it a lot, but even when we were writing all the sketches. We were really making fun of the other people [in the sketches] not being able to handle the fact that they couldn't tell. The laughs all came from that. But then, of course, when you're defending your joke, as we know, you've already lost them."

Sweeney continued recalling what triggered the revisit, "I actually feel very positive about it," she said. "There's a documentary that got made, and it's gonna come out this next year. And there's a lot of trans-comedy writers in LA that were inspired by Pat, that loved Pat. I've been interviewed for three years for this documentary, and it was like therapy for me. I was like, yeah, Pat, that was a good idea…I love Pat now."

The "Pat" sketches put Sweeney in a short curly wig, blue dress shirt, long pants, and thick glasses, adapting quirky noises, double entendres, and nerdy look as those around Sweeney's character try to devise ways to determine the character's gender. The sketches' popularity resulted in a 1994 Disney film under their Buena Vista Pictures banner called It's Pat, directed by Adam Bernstein, written by Sweeney (who also starred), Jim Emerson, and Stephen Hibbert, which, unfortunately, bombed in the box office. It would be the first of two SNL-related films to star female cast members, with 1999's Superstar starring Molly Shannon being the second. For more, you can check out the video. SNL 50 airs on February 16th on NBC.

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