Julia Sweeney appeared on “The View” prior to the “SNL” 50 -year anniversary special and admitted that she “took it to heart” and “thought a lot about it” when her sketchy character Pat was met with controversy of the LGBTQ community . Pat was a recurring character on “SNL” in the early 1990s and headed the 1994 feature film, “It’s Pat”. The character is an androgynous misfit, with the intended humor that comes from the people around Pat and is unable to find out the gender of Pat.
“Transparent” maker Joey Soloway Made newspaper heads in 2017 For the closing of Pat as a “terrible piece of anti-trans propaganda.” Soloway said that the sketch was a “hateful, hateful, terrible thing not to do with non-binue people-to create this character that the whole world laughed openly.”
While Sbeeney recognized about ‘The View’ that ‘there was some criticism’ of Pat, she reminded viewers that ‘Pat is not translated or not binary. Pat is a man or a woman, but you just don’t know which pat is. That is the joke, but I understood the criticism and I took it to heart and thought a lot about it. ‘
“But even when we were writing all the sketches,” she continued, “we really fooled the other people [in the sketches] Not being able to tackle that they couldn’t tell. The smile all came from that. But then, of course, if you defend your joke, as we know, you have already lost them. “
According to Sweeney, a documentary about Pat was filmed and “I actually feel very positive about it. It will be released next year. And there are many transcomedy writers in LA who were inspired by Pat who loved Pat. I was interviewed for this documentary for three years, and it was like therapy for me. I had something like that, yes, Pat, that was good … I love Pat now. “
Seveney revived Pat for an episode of Showtime’s “Work in Progress” in 2021.