With its combination of improvisation, live television, and a storied legacy, Saturday Night Live must be one of the most intimidating gigs in show business. Just ask SNL vet Nasim Pedrad, who was a cast member from 2009 to 2014. While she may have been done with SNL, she wasn’t done with comedy. Shortly after her run, her next big TV gig was that of a series regular on New Girl, and after that she led two seasons of her own bonkers sitcom, Chad. Despite this, she’s not strictly a comedian, and believes the stressful chaos of SNL has prepared her to delve into drama.
I recently spoke with Nasim Pedrad about Chad Season 2’s release on Roku. They’re not currently working on a Season 3, so she finally has some time, and said this about what she’d like to do with it:
I mean, I was classically trained and, you know, I went to theater school, and there's something about being immersed in comedy, especially like surviving six years on Saturday Night Live, I feel like you come out of that feeling like, nothing will ever be that scary. And so it becomes a true joy to challenge yourself and to do things that feel new and different… I really like had no time in the calendar year to pop into other projects. But now that we're done with Season 2, it'll be fun to, you know, to play in someone else's sandbox and collaborate with people and do some dramas.
It makes sense that Saturday Night Live would instil a sense of fearlessness amongst its cast members. After 6 years of performing fresh material weekly, delving into dramatic acting doesn’t sound like such a rough endeavour. Not that she’d be unprepared, as she is a trained actor, not simply a comic. Given that Chad likely won’t come back, she now has the time to, as she put it, “play in someone else’s sandbox.”
As for Chad, the show is likely over for good. This is devastating to me, a superfan, but the show has had a rough go of it thus far. After being cancelled on TBS the day it was supposed to premiere, it was saved by Roku. This was back in 2022, and given that half of the cast is comprised of children, there would likely be some continuity errors with aging if they picked up where they left off. But hey, anything can happen! And given that the show largely draws from Pedrad’s personal life, there’s many directions they can go from here.
You can watch Chad on Roku right now! It doesn’t seem like Nasim Pedrad has any dramas in the works, but the second one is announced, we’ll let you know. Of course, SNL has more solid hosts and musical guests on the way, and there’s plenty of other exciting TV to look forward to on the 2024 schedule.
