Cheri Oteri Makes Merry on 'Saturday Night Live'
 By FRAZIER MOORE, AP Television Writer
 
 

    In the space of 90 minutes last Saturday night, Cheri Oteri was a mouthy fatso on a talk show. She was Rita, The Woman on the Porch. And more.

But that was then.

Now, it's Monday morning. Closeted in her windowless office on the 17th floor at NBC, Cheri Oteri is writing two sketches for the "Saturday Night Live" that looms ahead.

One she calls "Big Day," about a mother trying to get her kids up in the morning. "My mother used to say that: 'C'mon, let's go! Big day!' "

The other would team her with this week's host, Alec Baldwin, as a couple out on a date.

Truth is, she wrote that sketch earlier in the season, with host Anthony Edwards in mind, then held it back. All the better. Baldwin would be good for an added joke.

"In the sketch, we're standing on line for a movie," she explains, "so I can make the movie his new one, 'The Juror.' " She pulls up the script on her computer screen. "I'll just type in Alec's name."

Like her "SNL" compadres, Cheri Oteri has the next 48 hours to whip her material into shape.

"Everything has to be in by 10 a.m. Wednesday," she says. "Then you go to the read-through." There, with executive producer Lorne Michaels presiding, writers pitch their creations. And often, get shot down. "Who knows? I've got my fingers crossed."

Viewers who catch "SNL" this Saturday (11:30 p.m. EST) can see if "Still Dating" or "Big Day" makes the cut. But even if they don't, Cheri Oteri is likely to shine.

She just stands out, and no wonder. She's funny, versatile, magnetic, and, by the way, a towering 5-feet-1.

And then there's that name, a little whirlpool of a name which, heard even once, fastens to your brain like gum beneath a counter. Cheri Oteri! Say it loud and there's music playing! It's got to be the most euphonious name since ... since what? Coca-Cola? Charlemagne?

As recently as last summer, Cheri Oteri, late of Philadelphia, was office-temping in Los Angeles. She was also performing with the Groundlings, the improv group that graduated former "SNL"-ers Laraine Newman, Phil Hartman and Jon Lovitz. Her TV experience totaled one commercial she has never seen.

Then, just before the Fourth of July holidays, she was flown to Manhattan to audition as a player for "SNL." The night of Saturday, Sept. 30, she and five other newcomers helped "SNL" kick off its 21st season.

"I was so scared," she confesses. "I kept thinking, 'God let me get through it!' "

She did, and then some, scoring a bull's-eye with fellow newcomer Molly Shannon as veteran hoofers Debbie Reynolds and Ann Miller in a talk-show spoof called "Leg Up."

In the weeks since, she has been Barbara Walters and Fran Drescher and even Ross Perot.

And then there's brassy Rita, patrolling her porch as she natters with the neighborhood.

Oteri says she patterned Rita on her grandmother, "who is a living saint, a beautiful person, but who has a mouth like a dock worker." The latter was reflected a bit too faithfully during one "Rita" sketch, when Oteri covered from a momentary slip-up with a saltier version of "What's this about?"

While the crack was comfortably in character for Rita (not to mention the improv theater world she was born in), it was strictly out of bounds for network TV.

"After the sketch I remember walking off the set and passing Lorne. I said 'Sorry' and kept walking."

Of course, Cheri Oteri seldom stands still. Once, while killing time in the studio, she fell into a rhythmic stamping of her feet. Then fellow "SNL" player Will Ferrell joined in.

"We were doing these stupid moves and stupid cheers and we couldn't stop laughing. I said, 'We should do a cheerleader sketch.' "

What resulted, of course, were the indefatigable Ariana and Craig, who aren't about to let getting dropped from the Spartans squad dampen their spirits - or shut them up.

The bit was a smash with viewers.

"I've got a friend who works in a bank and she told me her co-workers were going, 'Who's the Spartan havin' my ba-bee?' 'It's me! It's me!'

"When I heard that, I thought, this is like when I was in high school and we'd go in on Monday morning and repeat the thing we'd loved the best on that weekend's 'Saturday Night Live.'

"I couldn't believe it," says Cheri Oteri, thrilled to be getting cheers as well as giving them. "Somebody's repeating what I'm saying!"

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