Cheri Oteri Walked Into Happy’s Place — and I Had a Front-Row Seat

I have been a fan of Cheri Oteri since her Saturday Night Live days, so getting to be on set as her dialogue coach when she walked through the doors of Happy’s Place as the no-nonsense health inspector Monica Ulrich was, genuinely, a pinch-me moment. She is everything you hope an SNL legend will be — generous, wickedly funny, and completely, absolutely present in every single take.

The episode “Mouse in the House” gave Cheri a character so perfectly calibrated to her gifts: a hard-line bureaucrat who turns into a giggling schoolgirl the second she locks eyes on Rex Linn’s Emmett. The writers — executive producers Kevin and Julie Abbott, Michael Hanel, Mindy Schultheis, and Pamela Fryman — built a role tailor-made for her, and she ran with it so brilliantly that producers brought her back for multiple additional episodes in Season 2. Watching her bounce off Reba McEntire, Melissa Peterman, Rex Linn, Belissa Escobedo, Pablo Castelblanco, and Tokala Black Elk was a comedy master class from every angle of that studio.

Cheri told NBC Insider that walking onto the Happy’s Place set felt like “walking into a big hug” — and I can confirm that’s exactly what it is, every single day. Getting to be there when one of the all-time greats experienced it for the first time was something I will never take for granted. What a set. What a comedian. What a season.