on the evening of December 12, 2005. They recorded the following night in the office The Lonely Island occupied together using a laptop Taccone bought on Craigslist. While colleagues were rehearsing and rewriting that Saturday's show, the group spent the morning of December 15 shooting their video with a borrowed camera. The video used the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in Chelsea to stand in for a multiplex cinema and Taccone's girlfriend's sister, comic Emily Heller, to play a convenience-store clerk. Schaffer spent the entire next night (into the morning) editing the video and working with technicians to bring it up to broadcast standards. In the moments preceding the show's live performance and broadcast, the team learned from Michaels that "Lazy Sunday" would be shown on that night's show. The three comedians were very worried about how the video would be received by the studio audience. Release The short had its premiere on Saturday Night Live (season 31, episode 9) and received positive responses. "It played really well, and we were just super happy about that," said Samberg. The video aired during the actor's first season on the show, when he and the comedy troupe were little known to even Saturday Night Live most devout fans; Samberg reported that the video greatly increased his recognizability "overnight". "It captures a certain scrappiness about the show. There's an unpolished realness to it that I think people can instantly relate to," said Saturday Night Live veteran Amy Poehler. By the following morning, the video was a national cultural sensation. Schaffer and Taccone were contacted by friends who heard the track played on radio stations and in bars and it inspired a line of T-shirts, released during the initial boom of popularity in the weeks after its release. Bill Hader, speaking about the event in 2019 on Conan O'Brien's podcast, recalled Samberg receiving an applause break the following week when appearing in a sketch. Hader recalled, "None of us were angry or jealous but it was more of an envious [feeling], just 'wow, did you see that?' We'd never been that close to a thing that was a phenomenon." The success of "Lazy Sunday" encouraged Michaels to trust the troupe more and push their material onto the show. The short was initially available after its broadcast through the iTunes Store (then known as the iTunes Music Store), made free for subscribers. Additionally, it was posted