Hudson Valley Ballers: SNL writers hit the country with a few funny guests

Featuring ad-libbing star guests, surreal jokes and a rural idyll, this web show from two Saturday Night Live writers is becoming a cult favourite

“It’s just a such strange little show,” said Paula Pell, fondly. It’s an apt description for Hudson Valley Ballers, the web series that Pell, a writer for Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock, created with fellow SNL writer James Anderson and cinematographer and writer Michelle Lawler.

The show stars Pell and Anderson as comedy writers who leave their high-stress jobs for a more low-key life in the country as bed-and-breakfast owners. What happens is anything but laid-back, with a stream of strange guests (think an intense Natasha Lyonne demanding wine), stranger love interests (Paul Rudd as a muralist for Olive Garden who does voiceovers for porn), and household horrors (did that doll just move?) interrupting their country idyll.

Anderson, who recently purchased a home near Mohonk Mountain in New York State, swears that the show is based on real life, but as with anything these three say, it’s hard to know what is real and what is said with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

What is true is that Anderson and Pell have been friends for years. “We went to college together, we were roommates, we’ve known each other a long, long time,” says Anderson.

“And it shows,” added Lawler, dryly. She met Pell on the set of a short film and they immediately hit it off.

“She kept calling me a ‘baller’,” said Pell. “That made me laugh so hard because I’m a 55-year-old older matronly lady and being called a ‘baller’ just makes me laugh.”

The three friends started throwing around ideas for a project to work on together and eventually landed on the web series. “I emailed Lorne [Michaels, SNL executive producer] at Above Average and asked him if James and I could do this web series,” said Pell. “All I said in the email was: ‘I may be topless on a John Deere mower,’ and he said: ‘I’m on board.’ So we did it.” The show’s second season starts with Pell and Anderson in Michaels’ office quitting – or possibly getting fired – from their jobs as writers on Saturday Night Live.

While the story is fictional, it is based heavily on their personal experiences. “James and I have lived in some pretty weird apartments,” said Pell. “When we were in college, we had one landlady, and when we came home drunk one night and couldn’t find our keys we knocked on her window to try and get into our little apartment in the back – and she came to the door with a big shotgun and was like: ‘Oh my god, y’all don’t ever do that again or I will shoot you!’” This story was translated into the tale of a gun-toting character played to great effect by SNL’s Rachel Dratch in the new season of Hudson Valley Ballers. “We have lived through some crazy characters, so writing crazy characters in sort of a rural area is easy for us,” said Pell.

While both Pell and now Anderson have discovered the charms of the Hudson Valley as a getaway from the stress of city life, the show didn’t come from a daydream of opening up an inn. These are comedy professionals, after all, and while the idea of cashing out of Hollywood for a supposedly idyllic life in the Hudson Valley is good fodder for comedy, they also have very pragmatic reasons to set the show inside a B&B. “It was a really good vehicle to get Paula and James under one roof, throwing back to their college days when they shared a bed,” said Lawler. “They are just in this thing together and acting like fish out of water. The B&B is a good backdrop for that.”

Anderson added: “It also lets you have a continuous train of people and characters coming in and out.”

The first season of the web series came out in 2013 but despite its popularity, it took two years for the team to follow up with new episodes. “We kind of lost track of the time frame,” said Pell, explaining that they had done an informal pitch for a TV show before Above Average and L Studio came together for a deal that allowed them some financial freedom to get what Pell described as “more technical stuff, having more guest stars, and paying everybody really well”.

“Actually,” interrupted Anderson, “it’s that none of us were speaking to each other.”

“I was trying to bullshit you,” joked Pell.

Lawler said: “We had a huge fight on the last show and we swore we would never do another episode of Hudson Valley Ballers again. Never, ever. Then they said they would give us 10 more dollars and we said OK.”

While the last season of the show was shot entirely in Pell’s home in the Hudson Valley, the new partnership with L Studio meant a bigger budget and actual locations. “This year we had a lot more resources to make a smooth, fun production,” said Lawler.

Pell was also relieved not to have to shoehorn the complete show into her home. “This time we could actually get a bar and a B&B and a hardware store,” said Pell. However, a bigger production created other concerns, at least for her. “I was paranoid that it was too professional this year – that it wouldn’t be fun, because sometimes when things get larger all the fun gets sucked out of them,” she said. “It ended up being just as much fun, if not more.”

The show has a very relaxed, laissez-faire vibe to it, but it’s not entirely improvised. “We have actual scripts for each episode,” said Pell, who explains that thanks to their roster of talented guest stars like Tina Fey, Lena Dunham, Josh Charles, Dratch and Lyonne, ad-libbing comes naturally. “They are all so good at understanding the character they are supposed to be playing and just going off, that we let them,” said Pell. “Some scenes were much closer to the actual script and some just went off the rails, but we didn’t care because they went to much better rails.”

“The soap opera episode went a little too far off the rails,” said Anderson.

“I think that’s the one that got a little wacky,” agreed Lawler, “But that one’s not out yet.”

“I had a baby in the middle of that episode,” said Pell, gravely. “I keep forgetting that.”

“Clearly we are method actors,” said Anderson. “We take a lot of time before each scene and really go through it.”

“Very nuanced, very realistic episodes,” agreed Pell.

“They’re almost documentaries,” concluded Lawler.

• Hudson Valley Ballers is available now

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