'SNL' Alum Talks Complicated Legacy Of Playing Androgynous Icon Pat

Comedian and actor Julia Sweeney says criticism of her recurring “Saturday Night Live” character Pat broke her heart, before she was told years later how empowering some people found the bit.

Sweeney, who was on “SNL” from 1990 to 1994, looked back on Pat’s legacy while chatting with People magazine during a panel celebrating the show’s upcoming 50th anniversary and the role the Groundlings improv theater played in its history.

During her four seasons on “SNL,” the actor regularly starred in sketches as Pat, a nerdy but sweet character whose gender ambiguity was the main joke. Other characters in the sketches would try to suss out Pat’s gender, always to no avail.

While Sweeney saw Pat as someone who embraced their androgyny, she said the character initially drew criticism from people in the queer community, including her friend, “Transparent” creator Joey Soloway.

“There were some people in particular… saying that Pat was derogatory towards nonbinary people and that it was really an upsetting thing as a person of indeterminate gender herself or themselves to even see Pat,” recalled Sweeney, who also played the character in the critically reviled 1994 movie “It’s Pat.”

The “Work in Progress” actor admitted that Soloway’s criticism “just broke my heart, because I felt that I carefully wrote all the jokes to be about the people’s uncomfortableness with Pat, not Pat being uncomfortable with Pat’s self.”

“To me it was an empowering nonbinary thing — and that it was perceived that way was very upsetting,” Sweeney, who has never confirmed Pat’s gender, went on.

Over the years, however, Sweeney learned that many nonbinary and transgender comedians identified with Pat, finding the character a rare representation of someone who