Michaela Watkins recalls her "rude" SNL firing and how Lynn Shelton directed Casual's sex scenes through a "female lens"

The Daily Beast

Watkins remembered being dumped from Saturday Night Live after appearing in the 2008-09 season in an interview on The Last Laugh podcast. "It does play out rather coolly, if I’m being honest," she said. "Everybody was presented with contracts except for two people. It is a little rude. It’s like, ‘I just want to say, I love everybody but two of you.’ It was a real humbling moment that I think personally was a huge growth for me. It forced me to sit with a lot of uncomfortable feelings and sadness and rejection and think about how I wanted to shape my life going forward.” Watkins also recalled the late Lynn Shelton, who directed her in three episodes of Casual. “She called me and said, ‘We have these pretty crazy sex scenes that we're going to shoot next week and I want to talk to you about them,’ which honestly, no director has ever, ever, ever, ever done," said Watkins. "But she didn't want to talk about like, ‘do you want to be on top or bottom?’ She wanted to talk about all the interpersonal dynamics between me and this other character. It's not just sex for sex, which a lot of TV does. Usually the go-to is ‘throw her up against a wall’ to show there's a lot of tension. But (my character on Casual) was totally sexually liberated with this person. So what does that look like? And I just don't think it's like, let's just show her doing doggystyle and knocking over a lamp. I’d never really dissected a sex scene like that with any director before. And it was so wonderful. And then on the day, because we'd sort of mapped out in our minds, I was so comfortable. We're just making art. She sees through the female lens and that was just so special.”