The Debbie Downer Origin Story
Rachel Dratch revisits Massachusetts and supports women in comedy.
Rachel Dratch attended the Women in Comedy Festival in Boston this weekend, partaking in an interview and Q&A session Sunday morning. She was the highlight of an already solid weekend and covered everything from her early improv days at The Second City in Chicago to her current experience with motherhood.
While Dratch, a Massachusetts native, has most recently appeared in Broad City and Inside Amy Schumer, among other projects, she’s most well-known for her seven seasons on Saturday Night Live. A member of the Tina Fey/Amy Poehler/Maya Rudolph/Jimmy Fallon generation of SNL, Dratch functioned well as both an ensemble player and as a sketch star. Among her many memorable characters (impressions and originals), one has stood the test of time and become its own pop culture phenomenon: Debbie Downer.
Debbie Downer first appeared during Season 29 of Saturday Night Live. The 2004 episode was hosted by Lindsay Lohan the night after Mean Girls premiered in theatres, and the skit, which would later become a recurring sketch, starred Rachel Dratch as Debbie Downer, as well as Jimmy Fallon, Amy Poehler, Fred Armisen, Horatio Sanz, Kenan Thompson, and Lohan. The plot was simple, which is perhaps the true genius of the sketch. In it, a family takes a trip to Disney World and is having a good vacation, aside from Debbie Downer, who repeatedly ruins the mood with her sad personal anecdotes and depressing facts. After each downer moment, a signature “wah-wah” trombone sound plays. The jokes included Debbie saying “the biggest drawback to working in a theme park is that you must live under constant fear of deadly terrorist attacks” and “it’s official, I can’t have children.”
The next Debbie Downer sketch came at the beginning of Season 30, but it was cut after dress rehearsal. It was most likely just cut because of time, since the sketch is hilarious, for both the audience and the cast. While not quite as insane as Debbie’s first appearance, her constant negative commentary at Ben Affleck’s character’s birthday party had everyone in the sketch breaking. Debbie has also appeared at Thanksgiving Dinner, the Academy Awards, and Christmas Eve with Santa Claus. All of the sketches were successes, but that first surprise one holds a particular place in Saturday Night Live history.
At the Women in Comedy Festival yesterday, Dratch told the audience that she came up with the Debbie Downer character while on vacation in Costa Rica during her time on Saturday Night Live. She was at a table with a woman who made a downer comment, and the character just sort of came together. Dratch, who made a cameo on the most recent episode of SNL as Denise in “Boston Teens” with Jimmy Fallon, also shared that she has also returned to do Debbie Downer since departing the show, but the sketch wound up cut after dress rehearsal. She joked that you never really know if your sketch will make it, even if you got the call to come back for a guest appearance.
I used the phrase Debbie Downer when I was younger without knowing the comic story behind it, and instead just assumed that it was a saying my parents used. I didn’t see the sketches until I started watching SNL when I was nine or ten. Dratch showed her young son (now seven years old) a Debbie Downer sketch, and he enjoyed the theme song, but was otherwise unfazed, so we’ll see if either the character or the expression persists.
