According to writer Julio Torres, a piece of advice from Emma Stone helped inspire Ryan Gosling’s incredible “Papyrus” sketch on Saturday Night Live. The sketch, which follows Gosling as a man haunted by the “Papyrus” font that’s used for the Avatar franchise, was a breakout success for the long-running NBC show. It even inspired a sequel when Gosling hosted SNL earlier this year, with the follow-up expanding on the original and incorporating Avatar: The Way of Water.
As he prepares to debut his new HBO show Fantasmas, Torres is looking back on a key piece of advice that made the sketch possible. The writer and Los Espookys creator told Empire Magazine that, while working as a writer on SNL, host Emma Stone shared that “characters aren’t vessels for jokes.” Torres kept that advice in mind while writing the original “Papyrus” sketch, which aired in 2017. Torres said Gosling had to play the character with empathy and honesty, adding: “I think the humor comes not from making fun of him, but from seeing qualities in him that we can relate to.”
Stone & Torres Are Right About What Makes “Papyrus” Work
It Stands Apart From SNL’s Lesser Sketches
The joke is in how far Gosling’s character takes his grievance and how he allows it to dominate his life, which leads to a clever pay-off in the sequel sketch about who Steven’s father is.
A frequent complaint about SNL is that the show tends to fall into a formula. There are talk show sketches and game show acts, and the punchline in these skits tends to be repeated and stretched out past the point of amusement. The characters themselves, as Stone mentioned, become the joke. That’s avoided in the NBC comedy’s better moments, which include “Papyrus.”
Stone and Gosling have co-starred together in La La Land , Crazy Stupid Love , and Gangster Squad .
Gosling’s character in the two sketches, actually called Steven Wingdings, has a perfectly reasonable and relatable observation that the super successful Avatar franchise uses a generic and perhaps misplaced font. The joke is in how far Gosling’s character takes his grievance and how he allows it to dominate his life, which leads to a clever pay-off in the sequel sketch about who Steven’s father is.
Saturday Night Live has been on the air since 1975, with lots of iconic sketches over the decades. Here are some of the best SNL skits of all time.
Torres will reunite with Stone on Fantasmas, as the two-time Oscar winner is one of the guests on HBO’s sci-fi comedy along with Dylan O’Brien. While it’s true that not every Saturday Night Live skit can deliver an unexpected and focused joke, and sometimes it is easier to go for a quick punchline, the best sketches will ultimately not only be remembered but also tend to raise the profile of its performers and creators. That’s been true for Gosling and Torres.
