- - Andy Samberg Jokes Lin-Manuel Miranda Got His “Hamilton” Inspiration from This Lonely Island “SNL” Short

Angela AndaloroJanuary 2, 2026 at 10:42 PM

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Saturday Night Live/Youtube

Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg in "Lazy Sunday" -

Members of The Lonely Island started working at SNL in 2005, with all three as writers as Andy Samberg also joining the cast

Samberg, Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer's second short for the sketch comedy show, 'Lazy Sunday'

Samberg, Taccone and Schaffer were joined by Chris Parnell and Seth Meyers to discuss the sketch's legacy, two decades later, for GQ

The Lonely Island and some Saturday Night Live greats are looking back at the moment the show's online potential was recognized, and share the ways their sketch may have influenced a major Broadway production.

Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer, the trio also known as The Lonely Island, chatted with GQ along with Chris Parnell and Seth Meyers, looking back at writing and recording “Lazy Sunday,” in 2005. The group's second-ever SNL sketch became an online sensation and changed the trajectory of the trio's careers.

As is the process with all SNL sketches, Samberg, Taccone and Schaffer started discussing it on the Monday of the week it aired.

"We had been talking about making this song with [Chris] Parnell for, I think, a couple of weeks at that point because we loved his Update features of him as this aggressive rapper," Taccone recalled.

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Parnell says it was "a very easy yes" to him joining in on the fun, as they worked on perfecting it from Monday into Tuesday.

Samberg shares his "proudest moment," the lyric, "You can call us Aaron Burr, by the way, we’re dropping Hamiltons."

"This was in a pre-Hamilton world. And I’ve told Lin [Manuel Miranda] to his face that I’m pretty sure he took it from us," he said.

"I think I came up with the idea of using Hamiltons instead of Benjamins. It’s so lame," Parnell laughed.

"It’s just ridiculous. But I remember him [Samberg] looking up something online or whatever because he wanted to see who shot Alexander Hamilton, and he wasn’t sure, but he had a pretty good idea."

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Parnell added, "They were at their desks and I think I was sitting on the other side of Andy’s desk. It was all very intimate; it was just the four of us writing it, recording it, shooting it. It was kind of a beautiful way to make this thing."

Shooting the video was "a little off the books," Taccone recalls.

"I bought a s----- radio from RadioShack... We borrowed a video camera from Maggie Hader, Bill Hader’s wife at the time. I’m on playback, so I’m holding Kiv’s backpack, leading him down the street so he doesn’t crash into things as we’re doing a pullback shot. Going to UCB Theater, Amy [Poehler] hooked that up. My sister-in-law played the girl at the bodega," he adds of the group effort.

When the success of the short hit, the group decided to keep that gritty element to the songs, even as big names like Rihanna and Justin Timberlake joined in on the fun.

"[They're] all recorded all the same way, with this garbage equipment. I loved that part of the show; it felt like it truly was the not-ready-for-primetime, kids f---ing running the asylum," Taccone says.

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Seth Meyers admits that it was a game changer for SNL, sharing, "It's impossible to talk about 'Lazy Sunday' without falling into the worst tropes of biopics or VH1's Behind the Music, but the reality is, the minute I saw it at dress rehearsal, I thought the words, 'everything has changed forever.' "

Parnell adds, "I remember Paul Thomas Anderson was there at the show with Fiona Apple, and them both coming up to me in the hallway and just going, 'That was so awesome, that was so amazing.' ”

When the gang were called in to discuss the sucess with Lorne Michaels, they knew a shift had occurred.

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"We did 'Lazy Sunday' and came back to LA for meetings in January and all of a sudden our meetings were with the heads of movie studios. It was definitely the one that made the biggest difference. This was the one going from unknown to known," Scaffer says.

"What made it so great then and still today is that it was an instant hit but also felt DIY in a way things hadn't for so long," Meyers says.

Samberg concludes, "It unquestionably did change my life. I’m just so happy it happened."

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”