Yael Kohen’s “We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy,” out today, is an oral history that charts the role of female comedians in this country, from Joan Rivers and Phyllis Diller’s lewd, joke-based night-club gigs of the nineteen-fifties to the idiosyncratic performances of the alternative comedians Kristen Schaal and Aubrey Plaza today, with Elaine May, Lily Tomlin, Janeane Garofalo, and many other doyennes of comedy interviewed and discussed along the way. The section of the book about the women of “Saturday Night Live,” excerpted here, focusses on a period in the nineteen-nineties and early aughts when a group of ambitious female cast members transformed “S.N.L.”—a notorious boys’ club since its first season, in 1975—into a space where female comedians could collaborate and thrive.

The show had produced occasional female stars, like Gilda Radner and Jan Hooks, during its first two decades, but beginning in 1995, a fundamental shift in the show’s gender balance began to take place. With the arrival of Molly Shannon and Cheri Oteri, and, the following year, Ana Gasteyer, “S.N.L.” saw a new core of female cast members who fought for time on the air, encouraged each other to succeed, and took ownership of their performance styles. These women paved the way for subsequent generations of female cast members—Rachel Dratch, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, and, later, Kristen Wiig—who continued to bolster the position of women on the show and, in the process, became some of the biggest names, male or female, in comedy today.

PAULA PELL, writer, 1995-present: Tina Fey is a very old friend of mine and I adore her. But I think there’s a little bit of fogginess about what came before her. And it’s always bothered me because I was here before Tina came, and [starting in 1995] there was an amazing female presence at the show. The Rolling Stone cover that we did during that time featured Molly Shannon and Cheri Oteri as Mary Katherine and the Cheerleaders [respectively]. They were stars, and I think those women set the tone. The three of them—Molly, Cheri and later Ana Gasteyer—were headlining three-quarters of the show.

MAYA RUDOLPH, cast member, 2000-2007: I remember, very clearly, watching Molly on TV doing Mary Katherine Gallagher. It was the Gabriel Byrne show. She was in the school gym and she ends up falling back on all the chairs. At the time, I was playing with a band, and we were all on tour and we were watching the show and I remember going, “Holy shit! What is that?”

PAULA PELL: There was something about Molly being this weird loser-y girl smelling her pits and mumbling to herself, that just made people come to her. I think Molly is a really great actor and she was really coming at it from the inside out, as opposed to just applying a silly wig and saying, “I’m doing this character.” But I also think she had a fearlessness. She’d just set her scene up and say, “I want the chairs like that.” And then on the live show she would just run into them. I mean, those folding chairs hurt when you fall into them. And she frickin’ bruised the shit out of herself but she would get and applause and people would go ape shit.

CINDY CAPONERA, writer, 1995-1998: When Molly and Cheri and Ana joined the cast, that was when the women became way stronger than the men, initially. I mean, nobody does sketch like Jan Hooks, but Jan Hooks was not the star of the show. But here we had three very, very, very strong women that everybody wrote for. They were aggressive. They were ambitious—and rightfully so. I also think they succeeded because they all came in at the same time. Everyone was in a position to make change. It was a level playing field.

PAULA PELL: Cheri was very determined, too, very determined to write and take care of herself, and make sure that she was getting stuff on. I always called Cheri “the terrier” because she has such an adorable little frame, and when she would play that drug lady [a character who was hopped up on prescription medicine] she used to make me laugh so hard. She also had guts—I don’t know how to describe it except that it’s like that old school of comedy where you’re just balls-to-the-wall. If it’s not going well you’re gonna make sure you amp it up so when you leave the scene you’re gonna get a huge laugh. She always used to do that. She’d leave a sketch with her little part and do some little butt jig or something and just get a huge laugh.

ANA GASTEYER, cast member, 1996-2002: We had so much airtime. Those first three years were crazy. It was me, Cheri, and Molly. And every single week each of us had a heavily featured personal character, which by comparison to the men was a lot, if you figure that there’s like eight scenes a night. So the takeaway for so many people was, like, the women, the women, the women.

Don’t get me wrong, everybody played plenty of whores and wives. My first time on the show, I was in a G-string. It was this Caribbean Essences commercial parody with Tracy Morgan being a Rastafarian. I don’t even know what the hell it was. Anyway, we were all supposed to be in a big like hot tub covered with bubbles. And we were in G-strings and practically nude and covered in bubbles, the three of us in the tub as these, like, body girls. I remember Molly being really mad about it. It was the first thing I’d ever done so I was kind of like, “This is icky and embarrassing but it’s also part of your job to represent America. You’re a sketch comedian!”

PAULA PELL: I think as a woman, you have to really make sure that you’re taking care of yourself and make sure that you’re covered and you have enough material written for you. It’s true for all people new to the show. But it’s especially true for the women because the guys don’t tend to write the women’s character sketches. So you really have to make sure that you’re bringing stuff to the show and getting people on board with it, or creating it with people here.

ANA GASTEYER: The women, at least in my generation, tended to come at it almost entirely from a character standpoint. Certainly Molly, Shannon, Cheri Oteri, me, Rachel Dratch, Maya Rudolph and Amy Poehler—well, Amy’s maybe a little more intellectual that way—but pretty much all of us would start with a conception of the character and then find the situation or the conceit that would drive the comedy thereafter. [The alternative is for a sketch to be] premise-driven—a joke that starts the whole idea.

EMILY SPIVEY, writer, 2001-2010: I wish there was a way that character pieces weren’t perceived as feminine and concept pieces weren’t perceived as more masculine, but that’s just the way it is. Perhaps I’m speaking out of turn, but I feel like a lot of the character stuff is generated by women. Paula is responsible for a lot of great characters, and I hate to say it, but it is sort of the realm of women and gay guys—they write all the character stuff.