With a Wink and a Toke

Over the course of her six-year stint on "Saturday Night Live," Ana Gasteyer created sketch comedy staples like NPR radio host Margaret Jo and middle-school music teacher Bobbie Moughan-Culp--that is, when she wasn't delivering deadly impersonations of Martha Stewart and Celine Dion. But having grown tired of the confining nature of sketch comedy, Gasteyer left the show in 2002. Unlike her SNL peers Jimmy Fallon (whose new movie "Fever Pitch" opens this weekend) and Will Ferrell (who is in, well, everything), Gasteyer has had a handful of smaller film roles, tending instead to stick to her on-stage roots. In 2003, she played Fanny Brice in "Funny Girl" at the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera and has more recently been sporadically performing her one-woman show, "Ana Gasteyer: Let It Rip! An Evening of Song," in New York and Los Angeles. She was also just cast as Elphaba in the Chicago production of "Wicked."

Gasteyer returns to the small screen this month in Showtime's campy satirical remake of the unintentionally hilarious and stunningly inaccurate 1936 anti-marijuana propaganda film "Reefer Madness." She plays Mae, a drug pusher's moll with a heart of gold (and occasional black eye). The slapstick-kitschy flick lifts lines and plot twists from the original, recasting it as a musical with its tongue surgically implanted in cheek. It may not be for everyone, but it will have fans of the cult classic--and dorm-room stoners--giggling through their munchies. Gasteyer recently spoke with NEWSWEEK's Brian Braiker about "Reefer Madness" and life after "SNL." Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: So I watched "Reefer Madness," as well as the original, which is hilarious.

Ana Gasteyer: I am totally impressed that you sat through the old one. That's a stinker. It is hilarious. It's so awful.

Do you think they thought it was good when they were making it?

It is my understanding from that the original creators of the film were a Christian church group. The actors had a minor sense of the irony about what was happening because they were Hollywood aspirant actors, but the actual filmmakers believed what they were doing, in the propaganda. The original Mae was this actress named Thelma White, who passed away last winter, and she actually attended the L.A. stage production and thought it was very funny and a send-up. And she indicated apparently that they knew it was a little OTT [over the top]. I'm sure they were all partiers themselves.