My, Oh Maya: Maya Rudolph

It's 5 p.m. on a freezing Friday afternoon, and I'm at the legendary NBC studio 8H, home of Saturday Night Live. Superstar-in-the-making Maya Rudolph is doing a run-through of her biggest skit this week: She plays cleaning lady Wanda opposite guest host Ray Liotta as janitor Charlie, working at the Times Square Howard Johnson during the restaurant's last night in business. The stars are busy learning the choreography for an old Hollywood-style dance number when I tell the show's publicist that the closing of the classic fried-clam emporium is just a vicious rumor. Afterward, I'm afraid I've sabotaged the skit. Not every sketch makes the cut: Each week SNL plans an extra half-hour of material, then trims the show after Saturday's dress rehearsal.

Known as a stylish girl about town, Rudolph, 30, is working a casual look today. With her hair pulled back into ponytails -- thick, gorgeous hair that everyone but Rudolph seems to think is fabulous -- she wears almost no makeup and looks adorable in Abercrombie & Fitch jeans, a T-shirt, sweater and sneakers. From my perch on the stage, through a forest of stagehands, cameras and lights, the comedian, adored for her impressions of Donatella Versace, looks non-plussed as she chews gum -- an affectation for her cleaning-lady character, perhaps. Suddenly a snappy little Muzak ditty is piped over the loudspeaker, and the director says, "Are we ready to try it?" The choreographer says, "Left, right, step, step, back, step, step, step." The kids start shaking their shimmies.

Rudolph accidentally pokes Liotta in the eye, but no damage is done. SNL co-star Horatio Sanz, standing off-stage, gets carried away and begins dancing too, dipping a female stagehand. The hoofing is making Rudolph schvitz, so she takes off her sweater. Meanwhile, an NBC tour is passing by, and some gawkers have their noses pressed to the glass trying to get a glimpse of a star. With the sappy Muzak wafting through the studio, the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland-musical feeling of the sketch and the soft glow of the spotlight, Rudolph is literally glowing. Not glowing from the sweat -- glowing like an old Hollywood ingenue. Glowing like a star.

For her entire life, Rudolph's goal was to be on SNL. Three years ago, her wish came true when she joined one of the strongest casts the show had seen in years. The show boasts a hilarious mix of comedy giants (Chris Kattan and Jimmy Fallon) and giants-in-the-making like Rudolph herself. With a cavalcade of cuckoo-crazy characters -- running the gamut from a Charo-inspired talk show hostess to the queen of rock 'n' roll fashion -- the funny lady seems destined to join Gilda Radner, John Belushi, Mike Myers and Bill Murray among the ranks of SNL's all-time great comedy legends.

Now it's time to do a full run-through of the sketch. Rudolph delivers the skit's punch-line: "I'm gonna miss this place, but I gotta say, the food sucked." It's the only real joke in the skit. On a show celebrated for its high-octane nincompoopery, it's smart to slow things down once in a while. At this moment, Rudolph brings to mind past SNL funny lady Gilda Radner, who effortlessly switched gears between making the people peepee in their pantyhose and warming their hearts with her charm. Radner was an early influence on the actress, who remembers watching the show at age 6. "I loved Gilda when I was 6 or 7," she says, "because I had hair like Roseanne Rosannadanna. I remember crawling into my parents' bed and watching the show."

Performing runs in her blood. Rudolph's mother was the late, much-lamented R&B legend Minnie Riperton, famous for her song "Loving You (Is Easy 'Cause You're Beautiful)," and her father is record producer Ricardo Rudolph. "My childhood was making my father sit through my own three-hour productions of Annie, keeping the dog in the closet waiting for her cues." She would watch her mother on stage and think, "I want to be up there." She often told her father that the only thing she wanted to do was to be on Saturday Night Live.

After a few on-camera run-throughs, the cast breaks for dinner, and Rudolph and I head to her dressing room. She tells me that she has just found out that they let other people -- like guests on the Caroline Rhea Show -- use the rooms when the SNL cast isn't working, so she doesn't leave any personal doodads lying around. She adjusts the lights and, a cup of tea in her hand, curls up into a black recliner for a nice little chat. The first striking thing about her is that she seems so serene. You expect a funny lady to always be on, doing schtick, jumping up to do a tap dance and making goofy faces. But Rudolph seems confident and comfortable, very at home in the show that seemed to be her destiny from the time she was child.

After performing as a kid in school, she turned away from the stage while she was a student at the University of California in Santa Cruz. She spent time in a band, the Rentals, and worked with the Groundlings, a Los Angeles performance group known for developing great comic talents like Julia Sweeney and Paul Reubens. Rudolph's big break came in 1999, when SNL invited her to audition in New York. It was a dream come true, except that she'd just been cast on a TV hospital drama, City of Angels, and knew that if she took the part, she couldn't audition for SNL. So she did the hospital show, which got canceled after one season. Fortunately, SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels invited her to New York to do the last three shows of the season in 2000 -- no audition required. "It was trial by fire," she recalls, "which is better because I'm horrible at auditions." After the season ended, she spent the summer waiting and waiting. Finally, SNL told her they wanted her. She had two weeks to move to New York, where she lived in a hotel for the first month.

Michaels recalls, "There were some very strong women on the show, and I thought Maya would be able to develop without any pressure and make her mark, which she did immediately. She makes things sparkle."

Rudolph describes herself as a character writer, and she certainly has gained attention (not to mention belly laughs and applause) for the characters she's brought to life on SNL. In her first sketch on the show she played Ananda Lewis in a "Wanna Be a Veejay Contest" skit. "I had on a leather trench coat and a leather bikini top, and I remember thinking very clearly, 'My grandmother is watching this along with millions and millions of Americans.' I was really nervous."

Another great character, Rebecca, hostess of Fiesta Politico, was born of Rudolph's love for that showbiz legend and cuchi-cuchi girl Charo. On the show, Rebecca brings on guests but never talks about politics, preferring instead to dance wildly, gush in a ridiculous accent and sing songs. To create ketch, she and the writers watched tapes of Charo on a morning show. "She just says things that make zero sense," Rudolph says with a laugh. Rudolph's characters tend to take on a life of their own. "[My Fiesta Politico character] is based on Charo, but it's become it's own thing. Even Donatella is supposed to be an impression, but it's become its own character. That gives me license to be crazier."

The idea for Rudolph doing her now-legendary Donatella Versace came from her friend, writer Emily Spivey, whom she'd first worked with at the Groundlings in L.A. The initial installment had Donatella singing children's songs. "It's for the children," she moans in her slightly non-Italian but hilarious Donatella accent. "[My impression] just clearly became Transylvanian at one point, and it didn't matter because it was so funny." The real Donatella lives for the whole thing. Her New York press agent sends her videos of the show immediately after they air, and Versace appeared with Rudolph at the Vogue/VH-1 Fashion Awards. Does she worry that she's now going to be pigeon-holed? "I've tried to figure it out," she says in a thoughtful tone, "because it's the first time it's happened to me. Like Dana Carvey became known as the Church Lady. He didn't just do the Church Lady. Maybe it's a way for people to recognize what you do."

After further reflection, Rudolph adds, "Before [Donatella] it was 'you're that Gemini's Twin,' referring to the hilarious girl group sketch she co-created with Ana Gasteyer (who has since left the show). Reminiscent of Destiny's Child, the group features a rotating third member, which has been played by guest hosts Jennifer Lopez and, in one of the most hilarious sketches in the entire history of SNL, by Maya's childhood friend Gwyneth Paltrow. "I've been told that in gay bars, they show the Gemini's Twin videos on rotation," she says with pride. Sadly, since Gasteyer left the show to have a baby, we won't be seeing more Gemini's Twin for a while. "We could never do it without Ana because we came up with it together," she says. "But we have to do it again, even though it took nine million hours writing the dumbest songs and taping the dumbest videos." And, I point out, the return of Gemini's Twin would help balance out all that attention that Donatella is getting. Rudolph makes a Dontatella face and coos, "Believe me, I knoooooow."

Flash forward to Saturday night at 10:30 p.m. The crowd is lined up downstairs, ready to go through the metal detectors and head up to studio 8H. Upstairs, the cast is going through dress rehearsals. I have my fingers crossed for Rudolph and the HoJo sketch to make it on the air.

They announce the two-minute warning, and Rudolph is in a big group of actors dressed like reporters at a Pentagon press conference. She asks Darrell Hammond (playing Donald Rumsfeld) a question, which sends him off into a riff on the song "These Boots Are Made for Walkin.'" During the next 90 minutes, she transforms into a raver sorority chick, a concerned investor, one of the Hilton sisters and a big-haired casino cocktail waitress doing backup dancing for a washed-up borscht-belt comedian.

As the show's winding up, it's pretty clear that the HoJo scene has bitten the dust, and America will have to live without Maya and Ray's sweet soft-shoe number. Back in her dressing room, Rudolph is her serene self as she settles in her black recliner and sips her tea. "It's just really nice to be on the show," she muses. "It's fun to be out there laughing with your friends. I finally feel comfortable here. This is where I work. This is where I love to work. This is my family."

Donatella styling by Timothy Reukauf * Hair by Clariss Morgan * Makeup by Molly Stern * Assistants: Heather Catania & Anna Berns