Bill Hader recalls everyone stopping work at “SNL” when Adele sang during rehearsal: 'Who was that?'

Bill Hader and his Saturday Night Live colleagues liked Adele before it was cool.

The Barry star recalled his first encounter with the "Rolling in the Deep" singer when she made her SNL debut in 2008. "I remember us sitting at the rewrite table on [floor] 9, and Adele — not a lot of us had heard of her," Hader explained in the new documentary Ladies & Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music. "And she started singing, and it was, like, we all stopped. We opened the curtain and everybody looked down, and went, 'Who is that?'"

The doc also shows behind-the-scenes footage of Adele asking how she should carry herself while filming promos with Kristen Wiig and host Josh Brolin. "Should I look in the camera, where am I looking?" she asks in the 2008 footage. "I'm just kind of looking lost!"

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Adele performed "Chasing Pavements" and "Cold Shoulder" from her debut album, 19, in her first SNL appearance on Oct. 18, 2008. She later returned to the show in 2015 to perform "Hello" and "When We Were Young," and also hosted SNL in 2020.

SNL boss Lorne Michaels also appeared in the doc, offering a wild recollection of how Adele exploded in stateside popularity after her performance on the show. "The whole country was watching for other reasons," he remembered. "It just happened to be that show that Sarah Palin was on. Adele went to the afterparty, and then they went back to the hotel, and then went to British Airways at the 8 a.m. flight. She said when they were on the runway, she checked her computer, and she was at number 45. And when they landed, she was almost number 1."

Although Adele's debut album 19 had already made a massive splash in the United Kingdom upon its release in January 2008, it was her SNL appearance that catapulted her to popularity in the United States. The episode with Brolin and Palin was among the most-watched eps of the decade for the show, and 19 leaped to the the top of the iTunes charts the day after it aired.

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The documentary also includes older footage of Adele reflecting on the show shortly after her appearance. "It ended up being a huge show, and literally overnight!" Adele says in the footage. "Whenever I've heard that saying, 'overnight success,' I was like, 'Yeah, whatever, you've got to proper work for it.' And it was overnight, literally overnight, so."

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Later, Dua Lipa discussed the power of the SNL stage. "After she performed here, her whole career took off in America. Now it sounds ridiculous, cause you're like, 'Hey, it's Adele!' You know?" the "Levitating" singer said. "But everybody has to start somewhere."

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She continued, "SNL's musical legacy is the incredible opportunity it gives artists and the early belief in them. When they kind of give you the nod and go, 'Yeah, you deserve to be on this stage.' You get like a certain confidence and excitement and belief in yourself that you can do it."

Ladies & Gentlemen…50 Years of SNL Music is now streaming on Peacock.

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