‘SNL’ Writer Rosebud Baker: ‘The Mother Lode’

The Last Laugh

The Daily Beast

Comedy Interviews, Comedy, Interviews, Tv & Film, Society & Culture, Tv, Movies, Film

4.6 • 661 Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Comedian Rosebud Baker has gone through intense tragedy, grief and addiction in her life. But for her, nothing has been more viscerally “traumatic” than the experience of becoming a mother. Baker—who grew up traditionally conservative as the granddaughter of George H.W. Bush’s secretary of state James Baker—finds a way to turn that trauma into super dark comedy in her new Netflix special ‘The Mother Lode,’ half of which she recorded while pregnant and the other half after giving birth. In this episode, Baker discusses how her political upbringing has influenced her approach to both parenting and comedy and how becoming a mother has only made her more ambitious to succeed as a comedian. She also discusses the unique challenges of her role as “Weekend Update” writer on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ what makes a great joke for Colin Jost and Michael Che, why she thinks her viral comments about ‘SNL’ host Travis Kelce “practicing reading” were misconstrued, and why she’s “dying” to perform at a celebrity roast.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The Last Laugh. I'm Matt Wilstein from The Daily Beast, and this week on the show,
0:10.4	I'm thrilled to have as my guest, the very funny stand-up comedian and Saturday Night Live writer,
0:16.5	Rosebud Baker. Rosebud and I talked a bit before this past weekend's S&L 50 extravaganza,
0:22.7	which she told me incredibly was being planned just as last minute as every other regular episode of the show.
0:28.9	We get into a lot of S&L stuff in this episode, including her current role as Weekend Update joke writer for Colin Jost and Michael Che.
0:36.5	But the real reason I wanted to have her on right now is that she has a brand new hour-long
0:40.7	special called The Mother Lode, which just started streaming on Netflix this week.
0:45.5	It's a really wonderful special with a very unique premise that I will let her explain
0:49.9	during our conversation in just a minute.
0:52.4	Up until now, Rosebud's biggest claim to fame is probably that her grandfather was James Baker,
0:58.5	the Secretary of State and very close confidant of President George H.W. Bush.
1:03.7	But she is hitting such a stride in her comedy career now that I think before too long,
1:08.2	she will be a household name on her own.
1:11.2	Before we get into the interview, here's a clip from the mother load,
1:14.9	in which Rosebud talks about how she never wanted to become a mother herself
1:19.3	until everything changed.
1:22.4	It's crazy. I really didn't want kids.
1:25.7	And then I looked around, I saw how much fun all my friends
1:29.0	without kids were having.
1:30.9	And I said, that's not for me.
1:35.4	You know what I'm saying?
1:36.5	I guess, you know, child-free people,
	...

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