Former ‘SNL’ star and SC resident makes ‘First 100’ list on HuffPo

There are a lot of arbitrary lists on the internet, and this is one of them.

But it’s still really cool that one of our own is No. 24 on it.

Terry Sweeney — a former “Saturday Night Live” writer and cast member who lives in Beaufort with his husband, Lanier Laney, also a former “SNL” writer — was named one of the “The First 100 Gays,” a list put together for The Huffington Post by clearly-not-a-fan of President Trump with the idea that people might be tired of reading stories about the president’s first 100 days.

Trump stuff aside, though ... Sweeney made the list because he was the first openly gay actor on television. If you’re of a certain age or an “SNL” scholar, you’ll remember Sweeney for his spirited take on Nancy Reagan.

Sweeney and Laney also wrote for “MADtv” and they co-wrote “Shag,” the 1989 South Carolina coming-of-age movie that was the object of obsession for most of my friends at the time and was named one of the Top 10 movies made in the South by Garden and Gun magazine in 2014. Laney is a South Carolina native and drew upon his experiences of growing up in Spartanburg and spending summers by the pool at his country club. (All of Beaufort County should be given the opportunity to watch this movie once a year in Beaufort’s Waterfront Park. Just sayin’, Mayor Keyserling.)

Sweeney most recently wrote a hilarious book, a collection of essays called “Irritable Bowels and the People Who Give You Them.” I went out to brunch with him when it was first published, and you can read about how that went here.

This story was originally published May 1, 2017 at 1:09 PM with the headline "Former ‘SNL’ star and SC resident makes ‘First 100’ list on HuffPo."