“Some of you are aware that we had Rita Moreno, the great Rita Moreno, booked on this episode, and I’m very sorry to say that she cannot be here tonight,” Mulaney acknowledged during the episode. “We hope she’s doing okay. Rita, if you’re watching—I don’t know why you would be—but we hope you’re doing great, and we’re excited to see you on another episode soon.”
Thankfully, Moreno’s absence wasn’t the result of “anything serious,” according to her rep (per Entertainment Weekly). “Rita came down with a bout of vertigo on Tuesday. And because she lives in Berkeley, CA, she couldn’t get on a plane down to L.A.,” they explained. While Moreno was “bummed” to miss the show, she’s “on the mend.”
Moreno’s absence did give Mulaney and Fey, who shared that she had just landed in L.A. and was very sleepy and prone to “violent nosebleeds,” some good material to work with. “Have you ever filled in for Rita Moreno before?” Mulaney asked, to which Fey responded, “Once, in the movie West Side Story, but it goes by so quickly you can’t even tell it’s me.” “You were an infant,” Mulaney quipped. (EW points out that Fey wasn’t even born when the 1961 film premiered.)
Mulaney and the three guests went on to discuss one of humanity’s most pressing questions: Are dinosaurs put together correctly? “I don’t know shit about dinosaurs, John,” Fey, who’s been a longtime (honorary) board member at the American Museum of Natural History but whose main job apparently involves choosing the celebrity chef for the gala, chimed in. Life, and live television, finds a way.
