SNL rookie writer had been developing Adam Driver's oil baron sketch for five years

Vulture

"I got hired like two weeks ago," says Eli Coyote Mandel of his "Career Day" sketch. "So when I heard it was going to be Adam Driver I was thinking about things for him. I thought he would probably be very good at my weird oil baron thing. So I had to expand it and make it a five-minute scene instead of a 45-second character." Mandel says "the very beginnings of it were in an improv scene five years ago, in Chicago. I think I was just playing an old, old man. I was doing something with my cane as the old guy — you know, hilarious improv comedy. And then my friend Dan White was like, 'Oh my God, he’s crushing bird underneath his cane!' It was kind of funny at the time."