A Special Listen: Julia Gets Wise with Jane Curtin

PANTS with Kate and Leisha

Lemonada

Society & Culture

5 • 5.8K Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2025

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week we're sharing an episode from a show we love, Wiser Than Me. In this episode, Julia Louis-Dreyfus sits down with 78-year-old comedy icon and Saturday Night Live original cast member, Jane Curtin. They reminisce about the 50th anniversary celebration of SNL and the enduring friendships Jane formed with the women of that first cast. Jane shares the story of meeting her husband of 50 years, Patrick Lynch, their hands-on parenting, and navigating grief after his recent passing. Plus, Julia’s 91-year-old mom, Judy, recalls Julia landing the SNL job.

After you listen, search Wiser Than Me, for more episodes wherever you get your podcasts or you can head to https://lemonada.lnk.to/wiserthanmefd

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Lemonada. On October 11, 1975, I was 14. I was worried about boys, my weight, and my face,
0:16.1	and my awful hair, and my stupid name. I was embarrassed by my neighborhood, by my sisters, by all of my
0:23.7	parents. Nobody understood me, and I felt this more intensely than anybody else in the whole world.
0:30.5	What I'm saying is I was a teenager. October 11, 1975 was a Saturday, and at 1130 that night, I turned on the TV and guess what came on?
0:41.4	The messy, chaotic, imperfectly perfect debut of Saturday Night Live.
0:47.0	John Belushi, Jane Curtin, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Lorraine Newman, Garrett Morris, and Chevy Chase.
0:55.2	How do I describe the effect the show had on me?
0:59.4	Like a curtain lifting, like a bomb going off?
1:04.3	Yeah, but it was more.
1:06.6	I had found my people.
1:09.1	It might seem obvious in retrospect knowing what I've pursued in my career since then,
1:13.2	including being on that very show a few years later, but I am telling you this.
1:18.3	I knew it that night.
1:19.4	It was just like, bang, a revelation.
1:22.6	The first sketch was Belushi and Michael O'Donohue, and at the end of it, Chevy came out in a headset saying, live from New York, it's Saturday night. And then Billy Preston sang,
1:32.0	Nothing from Nothing, leaves nothing, which is the most sublime song ever. And then later,
1:39.3	it was Janice Ian. My God, Janice Ian, she sang straight through the TV to me and only me. I learned
1:48.8	the truth at 17 that love was meant for beauty queens and high school girls with clear
1:54.3	skin smiles who married young and then retired. Oh, please, give me a break. The best teenage angst song ever. And I honestly,
2:05.2	I was the angstiest longing, most longing teen. And that song, and Jane Curtin and
2:11.9	Gilda Radner and Lorraine Newman, funny women. I yearned to be with him. The whole thing was like a life-changing earthquake.
2:21.7	Actually, it didn't change my life. I don't think that art is like that. Art doesn't change your
	...

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