A Real-Life Buzzkill Inspired ‘SNL’s Debbie Downer

Apart from Chevy Chase, the most depressing character to come out of Saturday Night Live is probably Debbie Downer. The perpetually-miserable vibe-killer played by Rachel Dratch was first introduced back in 2004, in a sketch featuring host Lindsay Lohan. 

Debbie is dining with a number of friends during a Disney World vacation. But she can’t help ruining their enthusiasm with interjections about train explosions and the recent mauling of Roy from Siegfried & Roy. Of course, every one of Debbie Downer’s depressing non sequiturs is accompanied by a melancholy trombone sound effect.

How did this bummer of a character come to be? Well, as Dratch recently revealed during the latest episode of Good Hang with Amy Poehler, she has her therapist to thank.

“It really started because I went on a vacation by myself, (which) had been suggested to me by a therapist,” Dratch explained. “And I often leave that detail out. But since I’m on this one-on-one Amy interview…”

Although skeptical, Dratch went on the solo vacation, ending up at an “eco lodge thing” in the “jungles of Costa Rica.” While most of the other visitors were “really cool,” one guest was, well, a downer. 

During one communal dinner, “someone said, ‘Where are you from?’ and I said, ‘New York.’ And then they said, ‘Oh were you there for 9/11?’” Dratch recalled. “And it was like three years after 9/11. It wasn’t like it just happened. And then I was kind of like ‘Uhh– yeah.’ It was just like in ‘Debbie Downer,’ you have to get the conversation back (on track).”

“And then about a week later after I got home, I was out listening to some band… I just had that idea. Debbie Downer popped into my head,” she added. 

So Dratch took the idea to longtime SNL writer Paula Pell, and they hammered out the first draft of the sketch. It was originally set in an office, but it “wasn’t really flowing.” The pair realized that the characters needed to be somewhere happy, and figured there was no better setting than the “Happiest Place on Earth.”

Pell and Dratch also made those sad trombone noises with their mouths during the writing process, purely for their own amusement, before finally asking, “What if we put that in the scene?”

The character went on to return in several more sketches, including one that co-starred Robert De Niro, Drew Barrymore and Ayo Edebiri in SNL50.

You know, that event where everyone caught COVID (mwap-waaaaah).