How Vanessa Bayer’s Love For Home Shopping Inspired Her New Show

To prepare, Vanessa and I Love That For You co-creator Jeremy Beiler made a trip to home shopping mecca: the QVC studios in West Chester, Pennsylvania. 

“Jeremy and I got to take a tour of QVC where we got to meet these two hosts, Jane Treacy and Mary Beth Roe, who I always watched as a kid,” Vanessa said. “They’re still hosts there. They’re the biggest hosts there. Even after seven seasons on SNL, where I met a new celebrity guest host every week, I was so starstruck by them. They talked to us for like an hour, which passed very quickly because they’re so entertaining to listen to.”

In the first episode of I Love That For You, Vanessa’s character gets shown around SVN—the home shopping network where she’s just been hired—and she’s introduced to the bevy of hosts that she’s always admired on TV. For Vanessa, it was eerily similar to her first day on Saturday Night Live.

“I remember going in and meeting Kristen Wiig and Andy Samberg and Abby Elliott and just being like ‘Oh my god,'” Vanessa recalled. “I was like ‘Okay, this is my job now, I have to pretend to act normal around these superstars.’ It was so crazy to me that these were going to be my co-workers. I had to tell myself to act like it was normal.”