A woman who farts every time she’s surprised is not the most promising idea for a sketch. But on “Saturday Night Live,” Ashley Padilla took this premise and made it distinctive largely because of one bold choice.
As soon as she enters the scene, Padilla’s character is startled by co-workers throwing an office birthday party, and passes gas:
The comic responds to this embarrassment by doing something unexpected: saying nothing and, beyond groans, sticking with the uncomfortable silence. For a ludicrously. Long. Time.
This is such an extended moment that it alters the entire rhythm and thrust of the sketch, transforming a banal fart joke into something stranger and more absurd.
Such scene-shifting patience has become a hallmark of the breakout season of Ashley Padilla, who in only her second year on “S.N.L.” has become a hilarious new comic voice, someone likely to define the sensibility of the show for years to come. Cutting her teeth at the Groundlings in Los Angeles, Padilla brings an actorly nuance and subtlety to her goofy sketches, specializing in ordinary types (teacher, office worker, suburban mom, girl who just had sex) performed with oddball lovability.
What really distinguishes her is finely honed timing, specifically a virtuosic deployment of the pregnant pause. She waits longer than other performers. But the duration itself isn’t always the joke. Sometimes, her pauses are quick and subtext-rich, as with Melissa, a sweetly unfortunate soul determined to not acknowledge the obvious truth that she just got a catastrophic haircut:
Before she says a word, her entire character is established in this pause: the hesitation, head shaking and pivot into steely resolve. You get the sense that she considered canceling plans but decided to power through. Another actor might rush into the jokes, but by using the pause to reveal her inner life, Padilla gets an early laugh and makes her character more sympathetic, vulnerable and funny.
In the most culturally resonant sketch of the season, Padilla used pauses more elaborately: to create a comic rhythm that sells the joke. She plays a conservative mother admitting she was wrong about Donald Trump to her liberal children who can’t believe it took so long:
This character launched a million memes and surely struck a nerve for its topicality. But Padilla’s deliberate cadence also deserves credit, capturing the ridiculous self-importance and obliviousness of a certain kind of political convert.
Padilla is alert to the music of comedy, gradually building the silences with pace and intensity that operate like the tense orchestral movements from the “Jaws” theme:
This mom is also baiting her audience, hoping for permission to feel aggrieved, which she clearly is aiming for. This echoes the infuriating dead ends of so much political debate. Padilla adjusts the pace and employs minor-key pauses that deftly set up explosive outbursts:
The children, out of respect for their mother, are struggling to not react — and the sketch performers playing them are doing something similar, trying to not laugh, which gives the pauses a kind of double suspense. Padilla drags them out, making everyone else strain.
The same dynamic shows up in Padilla’s most recent triumph, a deceptively ordinary office scene tailored to showcase her gift for the comic pause. Padilla plays Kathy, an irritating bulldozer of a woman who keeps clumsily butting into conversations at work, then leading them nowhere. Her co-workers conspire to ice her out by not responding. Look how long she remains unfazed:
Padilla interrupts with a question designed to get a response, and Jack Black and Kenan Thompson pretend to ignore her. The game is on. She ups the ante, pausing longer, her antagonists clearly struggling:
The day after this sketch aired, Padilla posted the script on Instagram. It didn’t read like much of anything, but it killed on television and social media. Robert Smigel, one of the funniest sketch writers in “S.N.L.” history, posted on X that Padilla was a “miracle.”
Some say that comic timing is innate. You either have it or you don’t. But that is too simplistic. It’s also the result of calculation and choices, a willingness to take risks. A jittery physicality or a thick accent can broaden comedy. But Ashley Padilla proves that sometimes the most cartoonishly funny move is to change speeds.
Produced by Tala Safie
Timer animations by Aaron Byrd
Videos: NBC Universal
Jason Zinoman is a critic at large for the Culture section of The Times and writes a column about comedy.
The post The Padilla Pause: How the Breakout Star of ‘S.N.L.’ Nails Comic Timing appeared first on New York Times.
