What Maya Rudolph Knows About Mothers

When Maya Rudolph returned to her old stomping grounds to host Saturday Night Live this weekend, the cast members Bowen Yang and Sarah Sherman popped in during her monologue to declare her “mother”—and not only because she has four children. They also meant it in the slang sense of the word, which was derived from queer ballroom culture. So Rudolph launched into a RuPaul-inspired performance in which she ditched the dress she was wearing for a holographic bodysuit and vogued around the studio, flanked by dancers.

Ballroom culture originated in Black and Latino LGBTQ communities before seeping its way onto the internet. Now fans—or stans—of celebrities proclaim their beloved icons “mother” regularly online. But throughout the Mother’s Day episode, Rudolph had a way of combining both versions of the term. She is as easily at home playing a beleaguered mom tired of picking her daughter up early from sleepovers as she is playing Beyoncé.

That’s the genius of Rudolph, who has long embodied both the mundane and the extravagant with ease. You could see it in the monologue song, during which she declared, “Oops, I made you dance / remember in that movie when I pooped my pants. When you were a baby you pooped your pants, and I changed your diaper.” The reference, of course, is to when she squatted in the street in Bridesmaids after a truly inconvenient bout of food poisoning—a reminder that she has always been able to make a poop joke sing.

Rudolph has made a habit throughout her time on SNL of playing female icons. Some of her greatest impressions have been of Donatella Versace, Maya Angelou, and Beyoncé. But she always has a way of undercutting these greats, while still maintaining their regality. In her famous Angelou sketch, she played the poet as a jokester hosting a prank show. And in last night’s episode, she reprised her Beyoncé impersonation, playing the superstar making another visit to the talk show Hot Ones, where celebrities answer interview questions while eating spicy wings.

Rudolph first did a “Hot Ones With Beyoncé” sketch in 2021. Once again, her version of the singer was felled by the intensity of the sauces. Rudolph’s Beyoncé—wearing her Cowboy Carter Western-style regalia—tried with all her might to maintain her perfect composure, but ended up speaking in tongues, declaring that her bones are on fire, and discussing her “swamp ass.” The joke is not about making fun of Beyoncé so much as it is about injecting humanity into the most seemingly untouchable of stars. Rudolph did the same later in “Coffee Commercial,” playing an imperious actor named Dawn Farraway, a thinly veiled parody of Faye Dunaway, filming a coffee commercial. Dawn got a case of the toots from drinking all the coffee, but refused to acknowledge her flatulence or let it humble her. She was just as much of a queen even when she was farting, and the humor comes from that combination of poise and gross-out gag.  

Rudolph is also able to bring dignity to characters, specifically mothers, who are not Beyoncé-type figures. You can see that in last night’s sketch “Can You Pick Me Up?,” in which Rudolph plays a mom whose sleep is consistently interrupted by her daughter, calling to be picked up during the middle of sleepovers. The girl wants to leave, but doesn’t want to be embarrassed, forcing Rudolph’s Sharon to come up with more and more elaborate excuses. (At one point, she just unleashes a bunch of cicadas.)

But in the end, Sharon simply tells her daughter that the reason she’s taking her home again is: “Because I’m your mother and I’m a bitch.” She beams as she says these words, taking the fall for her kid. In that moment, her tired mom becomes a superhero, and bitch a badge of honor. Whether Rudolph is playing the most fabulous and famous of real-life women—those about whom people say, “Mother is slaying”—or just an everyday mom, her greatness comes from understanding both the labor and the beauty of womanhood. The most perfect person can be undone by hot wings, and an exhausted suburban lady can have a moment of applause-worthy valor on behalf of her daughter. She is a mom and she is “mother” all in one.