By Ray Rogers
Click. Click. Click. “Now give me ‘all knowing,’” calls out photographer Mary Ellen Matthews as her camera shutter clicks furiously. She’s encouraging Melissa McCarthy to bring Mother Nature vibes to a shot on the set of Saturday Night Live. “Perfect! Yes, yes, that’s it!” she cheers. In the comedian’s arms is my white rabbit Siouxsie, being used as a prop—and giving me a front-row view of the creative process in action on the 17th floor at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
Matthews and I have been friends for decades, since right after she took over from her mentor Edie Baskin, who originated the SNL bumpers, the shots of the host and musical guests that appear in between commercial breaks. “Is Siouxsie ready for her close-up?” she called and asked one day. “I’ll send a car.” I was happy to oblige for the concept of the comedian as Mother Nature in a spring season Mother’s Day show. “I liked the idea of having her hold some sort of forest creature and I thought of your little Siouxsie, and it was so fun to watch Melissa work with her,” Matthews recalls. “She was so gentle with her, making sure that she’d be safe in the shoot.”
In the words of the great British fashion designer Paul Smith, “You can find inspiration in everything—and if you can’t, look again.” This could easily describe Matthews’ eagle-eyed approach to the creativity she brings to screens every week as the staff photographer for Saturday Night Live. A longtime resident of both Manhattan’s East Village and Springs in East Hampton, Matthews is always looking for her next big idea, whether that’s keeping a pal’s pet bunny in the back of her mind, paying attention to the wheat-paste poster snipes plastering the streets of her downtown neighborhood, or taking in that famous light and natural beauty of the East End while tooling around the Hamptons in her old Mercedes wagon, surfboards jutting out of the back window. “I’m never not looking,” she admits.
How much space in her brain does this work occupy—does she wake up dreaming of it? “It kind of is always on my mind because I love doing it so much, and I always want to do the next thing better than the last thing. Am I dreaming of it? I mean, even in this conversation we’re having now, I just thought of something, like somebody’s dreaming of something—that’s a great idea. I haven’t used that before.”
The results of her quarter-century of shooting the zippy colorful commercial break bumpers have been collected in a new book, The Art of the SNL Portrait (Abrams), which debuted at No. 5 on The New York Times Best Sellers list. To flip through the exquisitely designed book is to find one moment of joy and wonder after the next—some outrageously funny (Will Ferrell pushing up daisies or multiple Larry Davids screwing in a lightbulb), others astounding in their quiet beauty (we’re looking at you, dreamy Frank Ocean and bright-eyed Billie Eilish). A voracious culture vulture, Matthews is always soaking up inspiration from life, be it rock ’n’ roll, fine art or just the ethos of classic New York cool.
“Even after I leave this job, I don’t think I’ll stop thinking of ideas for more imagery for the show. I’m constantly absorbing things that are happening around me and art that’s being produced all the time, whether it be different movies or new technologies, stuff that we’re seeing on Instagram, or I might just look through my old photo and art coffee-table books,” she says. “I’m always diving back into those because to look forward is to also look back; that’s the true place of inspiration—the greats that have come before us.”
To wit, one season she turned to copies of old Interview magazine covers for a pop art look. The image of Drew Barrymore on Purist’s cover hails from that era. “Taking a look at all those years of those absolutely iconic, fabulous Interview magazine covers and the art that Richard Bernstein created; he was the artist who did those covers. I have his book, and of course Warhol, I was just leaning into pop art as a reference and kind of experimenting with that look.”
In the book, you’ll also find images of Casey Affleck in a take on a Caravaggio painting she’d seen at the Met that week—with a comedic twist, he’s holding a red telephone; John Mulaney cast as Patti Smith in Robert Mapplethorpe’s Horses cover portrait; McCarthy as both twins in a bizarrely hilarious take on the classic Diane Arbus photograph; and Tina Fey and Amy Poehler as, yes, Simon and Garfunkel. “We were howling with laughter when they walked out on the set [in period-perfect wigs and ’staches, courtesy of the stellar hair and makeup artists on staff]—we just couldn’t stop laughing,” she recalls. “You know, you just can’t believe this is your job. To be able to work with this kind of talent and this team of creatives is a dream come true.”
The coolest job in the world happens to be inhabited by one of the coolest people in the room. As SNL overlord Lorne Michaels says of Matthews: “She’s both an artist and a star.” In her trademark cowboy boots and jeans, voluminous waves of auburn hair spilling out of a cowboy hat, she’s got a magnetism and charm that puts her subjects at ease—a winning trait, considering she often has but 20 minutes of their time in a jam-packed week up at SNL.
“The atmosphere helps,” she concedes, “because it’s on a Thursday afternoon and the studio is in full swing. There’s a lot of chaos around us and a lot of energy; the musical guest is rehearsing at the same time. So, there’s a lot of adrenaline already.” Yet even without all that, she’s a natural at coaxing her subjects into giving their best. Take it from her good friend, SNL Weekend Update co-anchor Colin Jost. “I’m biased because Mary Ellen is one of my favorite people in the world, but the fact that she shoots all the new cast members for their SNL headshots and manages to put us all at ease when we have no idea how to pose for photos is a not only a creative feat but also a saintly service.”
Even her homes are chock-full of creative flourishes—a sexy, red-brick-walled rock ’n’ roll lair in the East Village, with stacks of magazines and books piled high around her purple velvet couch, and a charming bungalow in Springs similarly laden with art books, quirky yard sale finds (she has a particular knack for spotting singularly kooky and fabulous amateur paintings), and outdoor sculptures handcrafted from a wildly talented group of friends who come for “summer camp”—“People will pitch a tent in the backyard and we make a sort of outdoor living room area.”
Growing up in Madison, New Jersey, the youngest of five children, Matthews was always a creative type—and an athlete (a gymnast and swimmer: “You could always find me flipping off a board somewhere,” she recalls). She had early exposure to photography through her father’s basement darkroom, the intoxicating fumes of the photo developer chemicals catnip for the budding shutterbug. “I loved spending time in my dad’s darkroom with him. I remember we went to the Bronx Zoo when I was around 7, and he took a picture of a tiger walking toward us through the bars of the cage, and I couldn’t wait to see the photo. And when it developed in the fixer, when the image got revealed, it was just so magical to see what I saw and then it was there in the print, coming to life.” Winning a family photo contest with a shot of a flagpole was an especially formative moment. “He encouraged us by putting the camera in our hands. I still have his Rolleiflex, too. It’s in my office at SNL.”
Like many creative types, she had a longing for the bright lights of the big city, just across the river. “We used to go in as kids to see the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree every year. We’d all pile in and go together as a family. I guess it was kind of in my DNA, just the excitement of the city. I remember entering the Holland Tunnel and getting so excited when we crossed that border and I saw that sign that said New York City. I loved the idea of so much going on across the river there and dreamt of being a part of it, but never did I ever dream to be a part of Saturday Night Live and its family and its legacy.”
To this day, that thrill of living in the city is still very much alive in her. “Every day walking out into the East Village, just as soon as you open the front door, there’s this blast of energy and people and optimism of what the day is going to bring.”
The iconography of Manhattan is a natural fit for her work on SNL, a show that’s so closely identified with and rooted in New York—whether that’s filming Josh Brolin, facing backward astride a horse in Times Square, or casting Megan Thee Stallion in a riff on Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, brandishing the Empire State Building in her clenched fist. Even her beloved pup Daphne gave a new twist on a New York classic when she got a starring role on the show bumpers during the COVID lockdown era—Matthews had the pooch sporting John Lennon round specs and the “New York City” font T-shirt from the ’70s-era Bob Gruen image. “We were all quarantined on our own and I thought it would be just hilarious to use her as a subject,” she recalls.
She’s also made it a point to shoot at some of the city’s classic spots while filming the show’s opening title sequence. “We’ve gone to so many iconic spots: The Odeon, Lucien, Grand Central’s Oyster Bar and the Chelsea Hotel”—where Matthews, sporting a glam, glitter-flecked suit jacket, had an intimate private book party in a chic back bar after a sold-out live Q&A with SNL alum Rachel Dratch at Barnes & Noble in Union Square. “I love old-school spots like Raoul’s, Indochine, and of course the Chelsea Hotel, because there’s the sense of that history of cool.”
Right now, she’s still in the thick of SNL’s 50th anniversary season, but summer is just around the corner, which means a chance to de-stress and paddle out at Ditch Plains. “We are on hiatus during the summertime, so after a punishing season, it’s so gratifying to exhale out East. To be able to get on that first wave at the end of May is such a gift. To stay in shape and get ready for the next season and maintain your mental and physical health is so important in order to keep the creativity at the highest level.” She also turns to Jimmy Minardi’s Surfer Yoga classes and Main Beach workouts to whip herself back into top form.
Wellness factors very much into her work as well: “I mean, what’s better than a good laugh? It’s so good for the soul to let go and find joy in everything, even if you’re struggling,” she notes. “I’ve been trying to find the comedy in difficult moments, just keeping a lighter side of life. Comedy is so important. It’s about giving each other joy, and that’s what I’m trying to do in these images—provide some lightheartedness or whimsy in this ever-challenging world around us.”
All images from The Art of the SNL Portrait (Abrams) by Mary Ellen Matthews