Comedian and actor Julia Sweeney says criticism of her recurring Saturday Night Live character Pat broke her heart, before she was told years later how empowering some people found the bit.

Sweeney, who was on SNL from 1990 to 1994, looked back on Pats legacy while chatting with People magazine during a panel celebrating the shows upcoming 50th anniversary and the role the Groundlings improv theater played in its history.

During her four seasons on SNL, the actor regularly starred in sketches as Pat, a nerdy but sweet character whose gender ambiguity was the main joke. Other characters in the sketches would try to suss out Pats gender, always to no avail.

While Sweeney saw Pat as someone who embraced their androgyny, she said the character initially drew criticism from people in the queer community, including her friend, Transparent creator Joey Soloway .

There were some people in particular... saying that Pat was derogatory towards nonbinary people and that it was really an upsetting thing as a person of indeterminate gender herself or themselves to even see Pat, recalled Sweeney, who also played the character in the critically reviled 1994 movie Its Pat.