Mike O’Brien is a staff writer on Saturday Night Live. On a summer break, he tried to think of something to do. He came up with the idea of interviewing celebrities in a closet, based off the adolescent party game, seven minutes in heaven.
O’Brien usually sticks to a sequence of events in the interview. He’ll ask the celebrity random questions, then move onto something he calls “closet theatre” where he and the guest will do some quick improv. At the end of the interview, O’Brien attempts to awkwardly kiss the celebrity (which is the most entertaining part for some viewers), which he explains is part of the whole “seven minutes in heaven” thing. Because of the first set of the interviews were not initially available for viewing, those guests did not know O’Brien was going to kiss them. Their reactions are genuine and not scripted. Because the interviews are more well-known now, celebrities almost always know what will happen at the end.
In the interview above, O’Brien interviews comedienne Kristen Wiig, who he claims did not realize he was going for a kiss at the end. If you want to see more Seven Minutes in Heaven, the videos are unfortunately mixed up in a few places. There’s what appears to be the original YouTube channel, then another YouTube channel, and finally on Yahoo! where the most recent videos are.