Maya Rudolph as Whitney Houston….freaking hilarious. I laughed out loud maybe 5 times during this skit. Maya always seemed to carry such a good comedic energy that never fell flat and could hold her own with the male cast members on the show and still is one of my fave SNL cast members.
Sidenotes on Maya-Her mom is Minnie Ripperton. Come on you know who Minnie is, she’s pretty much a musical treasure and one of the first celebrities to go public with her breast cancer. She worked with the American Cancer Society up until when she passed away. Minnie was also known for her five octave vocal range and sang back up for so many greats of those times, like Etta James and Muddy Waters, the list keeps on going. You will know her for “Loving You”, you know “Loving you is easy cause you’re beautiful…” you might even remember it from an early South Park episode where the pope was coming to South Park and the bomb was set to go off when John Stamos’ brother hits the high note in the song, but anyways moving on. Maya’s parents wrote “Loving You” as a lullaby to Maya. If you listen in the song, you will hear her mom croon “Maya, Maya, Maya, Maya”. Minnie died at a too young 31.
Maya now has a family of her own. 2 girls with writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson, he directed There Will Be Blood, Boogie Nights and Magnolia. PTA was with sad bastard song extraordinaire Fiona Apple for a long time and they say he broke up with Fiona to get with Maya. Fiona’s last album “Extraordinary Machine” was said to be heavily based on her breakup with PTA. Her goodbye song was “Parting Gift” on that album. Sad bastard music at its best, Parting Gift especially. So here’s a post that will make you laugh (Maya) and be pissed off/sad (Fiona).
