A Hot Tub Tragedy Gave Rosebud Baker a Dark Sense of Humor. Writing for SNL Helped Her Embrace the Silly (Exclusive)

Stand-up comedian and Saturday Night Live writer Rosebud Baker is having a major moment, with the release of her second Netflix special, The Mother Lode.

“Life’s been busy lately, to say the least,” laughs Baker, who also writes for SNL‘s Weekend Update, and recently attended the show’s 50th anniversary celebration events. But, she’s taking it all in stride.

“I’m very happy with how the special came out,” Baker says, which is centered around pregnancy and motherhood. “But, I do know that with any special I make, I don’t like it six months later. So I’m just enjoying this time that I do like it.”

The Mother Lode — which came out on Feb. 18 — was filmed in two parts: one where Baker was pregnant and another after her the birth of her daughter. In the special, she discusses topics about pregnancy, miscarriage, being a reluctant mom, and (mostly) embracing the messiness of it all.

Baker explains that even though she loves being a mom, she felt compelled to return to her job six weeks after giving birth.

“It was really important to me to get back to work,” she says. “My mom was a painter and an artist but had five kids by the time I was 10, and it was impossible for her to find the time to do it. So it was aways important for me to keep working.”

Baker, who was raised outside of D.C. with her siblings, had a grandfather in politics. James Baker worked as chief of staff to Ronald Reagan before later becoming secretary of the treasury.

In 2002, tragedy struck her family when her younger sister Virginia Graeme, then 7, was killed during a hot tub drowning incident that made national news. Graeme’s body got trapped underwater by the powerful drain suction at the bottom of the hot tub, and the accident was pivotal in the passing of the 2007 Virginia Graeme law, which required drain covers and pump valve releases on public pools across the country.

For Baker, the incident changed her life in myriad ways and certainly impacted her sense of humor.

“I think having an early experience with death, it does certainly give you a darker sense of humor,” she explains. “At least it did for me. Because when you lose a loved one, everything feels so absurd, and your real life feels so absurd, and to me, that struck me as funny. And I think ever since then, it’s like if it’s not a little bit sad, it’s not really funny to me.”

However, she credits working at Saturday Night Live with getting her to see the joy in goofy things, too.

“It has broadened my sense of humor in that way, because I had such a dark sense of humor walking in there, and the humor there is so silly and fun that it made me go, oh yeah, something can just be silly,” she says. “You can really revel in that too.”

As for motherhood, she’s found the silly in it as well, but admits she was scared to death of parenthood.

“The amount of terror that I felt going into being pregnant and being a mom was next level,” she shares. “And I did want to capture that in the special, because I think that there are a lot of people that are ready to be moms, or who spend their whole lives imagining being mothers. And I was not one of them. So I wanted to talk from that perspective.”

Next up for Baker? She’s about to embark on a comedy tour, and possibly do another season on SNL.

“We always have to wait and see,” she says of not knowing if she’ll be invited back next season.

“It’s very intimidating!” she admits of the job. “It’s still intimidating. It’s one of those places where it doesn’t matter how long I’ve been there, I walk in there every day going, ‘You have got to bring your funniest self into this building every day,’ even though you feel less funny than everyone who’s ever walked through these doors.”

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The Mother Lode is now streaming on Netflix.