Ana Gasteyer’s “Martha Stewart’s Topless Christmas” sketch from 1996 remains a perennial Saturday Night Live favorite and launched a recurring impression for the then-freshman cast member.
Gasteyer sat down with casting director and Groundlings teacher Tony Sepulveda during the famed improv school’s 50th anniversary “In Conversation” live panel series to discuss, among other things, if she was actually topless.
“Oh my god, I really, really, basically was,” Gasteyer said. “But that was a different time.”
Gasteyer went on to discuss the origin of the sketch, born out of Stewart’s unacknowledged, at the time, “weird hot mom factor.”
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“My friend Norm Hiscock wrote this sketch with me and we wanted to write her with as much integrity as possible,” Gasteyer told Sepulveda. “He came and was like, ‘You’re not gonna like this idea. What if we just do a promo of her Christmas show but she’s topless.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I like it.’ ‘Cause there’s this weird kind of hot mom factor that people were never really acknowledging about [her].”
Gasteyer thought it would be really funny to do a “really cheap black bar” over her breasts, “sort of like an old time-y, burlseque-y sort of vibe.”
Used to the bare bones of the Groundlings, Gasteyer didn’t realize what a different beast network television was, so when she threw out the idea of maybe having the Boys Choir of Harlem, she was surprised when they showed up, least of all because she didn’t “have a shirt on.”
The American Auto (R.I.P.) star ultimately credits the sketch for boosting her confidence and profile on SNL.
“My first sense of success on the show was Martha Stewart’s Topless Christmas,” Gasteyer told EW in 2021. “When I wrote that sketch and when it played, I remember being like, ‘Oh I might not get fired.'”
As for Stewart, she’s been showing off in all states of undress on the Instagram and her hot mom, or rather hot grandma, factor has been acknowledged and celebrated, by no less an authority than The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.
To quote Ana as Martha, “It’s a good thing.”
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