By Lisa Respers France, CNN

(CNN) — Meryl Streep made a surprise appearance on “SNL50” and came prepared.

Former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Amy Poehler talked the Oscar-winner’s sketch during a conversation for the “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast.

According to Poehler, she shared a dressing room with the esteemed actress and was super excited about it. She said she got to see first hand how Streep prepped for her role in a “Close Encounters” sketch with Kate McKinnon, Pedro Pascal and Woody Harrelson. McKinnon played Colleen Rafferty, a woman with raunchy stories of her encounters with aliens and Streep played the character’s mother, who has had her own alien encounters.

“She was getting ready for her sketch and really rehearsing it and I remember thinking, ‘I have never rehearsed as hard as Meryl Streep is in this one moment,’” Poehler said.

They were sharing a dressing room because there were so many guest stars for the celebration of “Saturday Night Live’s” 50th anniversary. Poehler said that like a fan, “I took a picture of the door that said my name and Meryl Streep and it was really cool.”

Streep wasn’t the only star, of course.

Poehler joked that when she went to sit in the crowd that seated to her left was “My old friend, my dear friend Jack Nicholson.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.