From last-minute script changes to the pressures of social media, comedian Larry Dean discusses finding his feet on Saturday Night Live UK, the value of teamwork and why overnight success is rarely what it seems.
When Larry Dean first joined Saturday Night Live UK, he was not convinced it would work.
“I think I won’t be the only cast member that thought this, but we thought that this could really not work because of how pessimistic the British public were about it.
“I feel the low expectation the audience had, because everyone had already started hating us before we started, meant that when we did it and it was good people were like, ‘Oh this is actually like good’, and that low expectation really helped us exceed.”
With the show returning for a second season, Dean believes audiences are increasingly willing to give it a chance. He also sees its arrival as a natural development for British comedy.
“I opened TikTok or Instagram, and people had been doing sketches online for ages and loads of people had built up followings out of it. I thought it only made sense for the UK to do a sketch show which has that.”
Behind the finished sketches, however, the production is considerably less polished than viewers might imagine.
“Even 30 minutes before the actual live show we’re chopping and changing things,” Dean says.
“I was dressed up as bloody King Kong and I’ve got three makeup people putting prosthetics on my face and I’m cocooned in this thing, stuck to the chair, and I’ve got a writer in my ear going, ‘Okay, just so you know Larry, when Annabel [Marlow] moves into the monkey hand part of the stage you’re going to have to pick up this doll’.”
“It is utter chaos sometimes,” he says. “A lot of the time sketches will be getting changed so much so quickly, which is why it’s pretty pointless to try and memorize things.”
Dean’s favourite characters include Louis Theroux and Peter Mandelson, the latter giving him room to depart from conventional impressions.
“With Peter Mandelson, I thought nobody knows what this guy talks like, so I thought I could just play him like a Dr. Evil kind of Bond villain.
“If you do a bang on impression, it’s never funny, but if you do an impression that is like 70% there and you add the 30% you’ve made up that usually is how you make it funny.”
The characters even follow him onto social media, where his searches influence what appears on his feed.
“My algorithm goes on this mad journey man,” he says, describing how his feed moves from Peter Mandelson to the Royals, and then to Noel Fielding.
“The algorithm obviously doesn’t know I’m part of Saturday Night Live, so it’s just going, ‘Oh he’s really into Noel Fielding, two weeks ago he was really into gorillas and King Kong, how strange’.”
One of the biggest adjustments, though, has been learning when not to be the funniest person in the room.
“I had to get rid of my ego very quickly, because a lot of sketches you’re not the funny one.”
In stand-up, the comedian carries the performance. In a sketch, Dean says, the priority is often to set somebody else up for the biggest laugh. He expected to struggle with that, but has found the cast surprisingly supportive.
“All the standups in the cast are very team player-y, and I was very surprised at that, I thought there was going to be ego’s flying around and stuff, but I think everyone realised that this show, if we don’t have each other’s backs and try and make it all about ourselves, is going to be a disaster.”
He was particularly struck by how Jack Shep responded to his rapid rise following the first episode.
“I was worried he was going to be like, ‘Oh it’s all about me’ or whatever. But weirdly, Jack’s got even nicer since that.”
While Dean was still finding his feet in the early episodes, he recalls Jack helping other cast members get their moments.
“Even success can bring out the better in people, rather than the other way around, which you never really hear about.”
The responsibility of performing on a production involving so many people has also changed how Dean approaches mistakes.
“I love being able to kind of go, ‘Oh, I get to say what I want to say and I’ve got so much kind of control’, but I also hate if I mess up a sketch, because I know how many people worked on that sketch from the cast, to the writers, the makeup people, the cameraman, and everyone.”
Despite the pressure, he enjoys moving between television and live performance.
“It’s great as well because you get light and shade man. I think when I was doing nothing but stand-up I didn’t appreciate it, and then if I did nothing but sketches, I wouldn’t appreciate it, but doing both I get the best of both worlds.”
Away from the studio, Dean is wary of how social media has changed the route into comedy. Viral attention can arrive quickly, but sustaining a career requires experience that a successful clip cannot necessarily provide.
“There’s been people who’ve had viral success and then they’ve just not got enough material to go on tour with or they don’t have the experience of handling a tour.”
He recalls one piece of advice that has stayed with him throughout his career: “You’ve got to get good in the dark.”
Before television, Dean worked his way through open mics, ten-minute spots and unpaid professional club gigs. He believes those years remain essential, even as social media creates the impression that success should come immediately.
“When people say overnight success, it’s never an overnight success, people have been working on their craft for years and now I think the problem is social media stuff makes everything seem as if it should all happen very quickly.”
He is equally concerned about the incentives created by online attention, particularly when offensive jokes attract engagement regardless of whether audiences agree with them.
“It ends up being like a fake comedy persona, and people are falling into that and not being true to themselves, but trying to change what they should be in order to go along with what social media wants.
“It’s a very strange kind of time, because like none of it is real.”
For now, Dean is balancing Saturday Night Live UK with his stand-up career and his new show, Hellbent, centred on getting married. Despite some audiences discovering him through television, he says his live material has remained largely unchanged.
“Some things are more cheeky than I could ever get away with on SNL, but that’s the fun of having a live audience, you can get away with more stuff.”
Larry will be performing live at Sheffield’s The Steamworks on November 16th, with tickets found on his website www.larrydeancomedy.com
