For anyone trying to cut their teeth in the comedy scene, working on Saturday Night Live seems like a dream job. However, for many who actually make it onto the show, the luster fades as they work long hours, face intense pressure, and compete with some of the other hottest rising stars in comedy.
Here are 24 former SNL cast members who revealed their negative experiences on the show:
1.
Seasons 45 to 51 cast member Bowen Yang “loved working at SNL,” but he felt pigeonholed into playing certain types of characters. On his podcast Las Culturistas, he said, “I feel like I was really bogged down the entire time I was there about the idea that there was no range in anything I did. I knew I was never gonna play the dad. I was never gonna play the generic thing in sketches. It’s a sketch show; each thing is, like, four minutes long. It is short and collapsed by necessity, so therefore it plays on archetypes.”
He continued, “These archetypes are also in a relationship with generic things, and there is a genericism in whiteness and in being a canvas to build upon. I came in pre-stretched, pre-dyed. People had their over-determinations on what I was, which was: ‘Oh, that’s just the gay Asian guy on SNL.’ So anytime I would try to work outside of that, it got completely ignored, or it still got collapsed to, ‘Oh, he’s being gay and Asian as always.'”
2.
Seasons 37 to 42 cast member Jay Pharoah was also boxed into one-note roles. He told Hot 97, “You go where you’re appreciated. If you have multiple people on the cast saying things like, ‘You’re so talented, and you’re able, and they don’t use you. It’s unfair, and it’s making us feel bad because they don’t use you, and you’re a talent…’ They put people into boxes, and whatever they want you to do, they expect you to do.”
He said that he was put into an “impression box,” where he was expected to mainly do impressions of Black celebrities. Jay also said he wasn’t the kind of person to say “yes” to everything, and he wasn’t afraid to put his foot down and decline some of the writers’ ideas. Additionally, he discussed the backlash he faced behind the scenes from speaking up about the lack of Black women in the cast. He alleged producers “were ready to get rid of [him] in September 2013 when [he] spoke up.”
3.
Seasons 16 to 18 cast member Chris Rock “got fired because [he] was leaving to go to In Living Color,” where he wouldn’t be pigeonholed the way he was on SNL. He told WTF with Marc Maron, “The decision was, like, the culture’s changing, and I’m not a part of it. This shit is getting hip, this shit is getting Blacker, this shit is getting fucking rap-ier… Like, SNL is still a pretty white show, but back then it was… When I got hired, I was the first Black guy in, like, eight years, and Living Color was just hip… I wanted to be in an environment where I didn’t have to really translate the comedy that I wanted to do. I had these instances where they wanted me to do certain things at SNL. I was like, ‘No, I’m not doing it.'”
When Marc asked for examples, Chris said, “Whatever slave sketch or Ubangi tribesman or whatever, where, not that I thought that they were racist, I just thought that, if you’re the only Black face that’s going to be seen for an hour and a half, it just doesn’t…there’s gotta be more, or another Black person. It feels racist. It’s not racist, it just feels when that’s all you see.”
4.
Season 20 cast member Janeane Garofalo reportedly said that SNL was “the most miserable experience of [her] life.” She felt that the way she was treated on the show was “almost like hazing.” She told New York magazine, “Fraternity hazing. It’s hard. It takes its toll on you. But I think you come out much better in the end. If nothing else, this experience has just toughened me up.”
5.
In a vulnerable Instagram video, Seasons 43 to 47 cast member Chris Redd said, “While I was at the show, I had some pill issues, you know, I had some pill problems. Nothing too crazy, but crazy for my Black ass. And I was even selling some to some of my castmates. I’m not gonna snitch on y’all motherfuckers, man. But it was really funny to me that I would be around on this shit, and people would talk shit about me. I would hear them because, you know, some of that Adderall shit got you super hearing and shit. But they wouldn’t help me, you know. I would have panic attacks, they wouldn’t be concerned about me or nothing. Just would talk shit. It’s crazy how somebody would watch you destroy yourself.”
6.
During the 2019 Evening with Stephen Colbert event, Season 8 through 10 cast member Julia Louis-Dreyfus described her time on SNL as “a pretty brutal time but a very informative time.” She said, “There were plenty of people on the show who were incredibly funny. But I was unbelievably naive, and I didn’t really understand how the dynamics of the place worked. It was very sexist, very sexist. People were doing crazy drugs at the time. I was oblivious. I just thought, ‘Oh wow. He’s got a lot of energy.'”
7.
Season 20 cast member Chris Elliott told Salon, “I had a terrible time. I always have to preface this by saying that all the cast, they really liked me; they were all really nice. I think I just went there when I was too old. I had already done Get a Life, Cabin Boy, and nine years working for Dave [Letterman], and I was amazed that people like Chris Farley and Adam Sandler were still competing for airtime on the show, which is the process there. It’s a really unhealthy process. You’re doing comedy, but you’re competing with your fellow cast members for airtime. I had never worked in an environment like that.”
He also told Cracked, “I seriously have no memory of it. And I think it was just such a miserable experience that I have sort of blacked out a lot of these things. That whole year, I was just embarrassed.”
8.
Chris Elliott’s daughter, Seasons 34 to 37 cast member Abby Elliott, had similar struggles with the show’s competitive nature. She told the Independent, “Every week was a new week, and your happiness would depend on whether you got something on air or not, and if three weeks went by without a sketch, you’d think, ‘Uh-oh, am I going to be fired?’ There was always that looming threat of getting fired. That was the worst that could happen. And then, I kind of did.”
9.
Seasons 11 to 17 cast member Jan Hooks struggled with intense stage fright, and her anxiety was only worsened when people began calling in fake bomb threats to 30 Rock. She told the New York Post, “Phil [Hartman] was my rock. He was so solid. Just absolutely serene. During the [1991] Gulf War, SNL had become this wonderful favorite place for crazy people to call in bomb threats.”
Before a show, she was so shaken by a bomb threat that she refused to go on stage. She continued, “Phil and I were in that show’s first sketch. He was the Anal-Retentive Chef, and I played his mother. I’m telling you, I was terrified… But Phil looked at me, and he always had a way of just wordlessly calming me. He — I’m going to start crying — he put his hand out, and I grabbed on, and it felt like an oak tree. It was the most grounding, calming, serene feeling that he helped me get through that.”
10.
On the fourth episode of Peacock’s docuseries SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night, Season 11 cast member Damon Wayans said that the writers “would shoot [his] ideas down” and kept giving him stereotypical roles, some of which he’d refuse. So, 12 episodes into the season, he went off-book during the live taping of the “Mr. Monopoly” sketch, making his cop character into the “effeminate gay guy” stereotype. Lorne Michaels “fired him pretty much as he walked off the stage.” Damon said, “I snapped. I just did not care. I purposefully did that because I wanted him to fire me.”
However, he and Lorne remained in good standing, and he was invited back for the season finale. He said, “Lorne is a very forgiving man. And I think he just wanted to let me know that he believed in me.”
11.
Seasons 11 to 15 cast member Nora Dunn had a contentious working relationship with costar Jon Lovitz. She told Salon, “I think we were a dysfunctional family. He and I had a love/hate relationship. I found it very hard to work with Jon because I came from theater when I first started, and you don’t fuck with somebody before they go on. You actually take your rehearsal seriously. Jon was the guy banging on the piano while you’re trying to rehearse. He was like that disruptive brother that you say, ‘Please just get out of here!’ When John Malkovich did the show, he obviously comes out of theater, and he and I were trying to rehearse an ‘Attitudes’ sketch, which he had written with me, and Lovitz was banging on the piano, and Malkovich asked me, ‘Is that what goes on here?'”
12.
Seasons 31 through 38 cast member Bill Hader struggled with the show’s grueling schedule as he expanded his family. He told Interview magazine, “SNL is really hard to do when you’re single and living alone. And then it’s pretty tough when you’re married, because you don’t see your spouse. And then you bring kids into it, and the minute our first daughter was born, it was like, ‘Oh, man, this is getting really hard.’ And then we had a second child. By then, Andy [Samberg] and Kristen [Wiig] had left, and I was hearing rumblings of other people leaving. It was time to move to LA and make a clean break.”
13.
In 1985, Season 11 cast member Terry Sweeney, who was the first out gay SNL star, was the target of host Chevy Chase’s joke about AIDS. Revisiting the incident in I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, Chevy said, “Terry Sweeney, he was very funny, this guy. I don’t think he’s alive anymore.”
In response, Terry — who’s still alive, for the record — told the Hollywood Reporter, “Don’t you think he is saying this and making himself look more like the ass he is!!!”
14.
Unfortunately, Terry Sweeney wasn’t the only SNL cast member who was allegedly mistreated by Chevy Chase. During rehearsals in 1997, he reportedly hit Seasons 21 to 25 cast member Cheri Oteri’s head. This, finally, was the last straw, and he hasn’t been permitted to host the show since.
15.
Of course, Chevy Chase’s reign of backstage SNL terror infamously dates back to 1978. The week leading up to his first hosting stint brimmed with tension between him and Seasons 3 to 5 cast member Bill Murray. It reached a head right before the live broadcast began. Moments before the cold open, Chevy confronted Bill in his dressing room, and they got into a physical fight (though the only person who actually got hit was John Belushi, who helped break it up). During the altercation, Bill reportedly called Chevy a “medium talent.”
16.
On Instagram, Seasons 48 to 50 cast member Devon Walker called SNL “toxic as hell.” However, he later told Rolling Stone, “To be frank, I guess the best way I put it is, like, me and the show kind of looked at each other, and we decided together that it was time to go our separate ways. I think I felt ready to leave the show, and I think the show felt ready to leave me. I was just ready to do something else. We both felt like it was time. This was such a big-time commitment and life commitment. There’s been a lot of life stuff that I feel like I’ve had to miss out on. And I felt ready to do a different version of my life. I think that me and the show are both ready to turn the page.”
17.
Seasons 5 and 10 cast member Harry Shearer told the Independent, “I grew to quite loathe the producer of the show [Lorne Michaels]. The first words he said to me were, ‘I never hired a male Jew for the show before.’ And knowing that he was Jewish gave it an extra tang… SNL was basically an unending fight to get on the air. [Lorne] is really an expert at manipulating people and playing psychological games with people.”
Additionally, he told IGN that SNL was “just not a real pleasant place to work” and described the work environment as “living hell.” He said, “The way it was organized… The way people were treated… The approach to the material… [by] management.”
18.
Season 11 cast member Joan Cusack told Fresh Air, “It wasn’t working, and it wasn’t working for me, too. I was miserable. I think I wound up in the hospital, actually. I had, like, some surgery, and it’s, like, horrible.”
19.
Speaking on a panel, Seasons 39 to 42 cast member Sasheer Zamata said, “It was not what I thought it was going to be, and I don’t think anyone really thinks it’s going to be that way because it’s not like any other job. So it was a couple years of figuring out, ‘Am I okay with this?’ Do I want to just accept it as is and be like, ‘That’s just a job, and I guess I’ll just stay and take it like everybody else?’ Or do I want to try something else that makes me feel really good and work with people who excite me and who are excited about me and want to create things that make us feel fulfilled?”
20.
Seasons 19 to 23 cast member Norm Macdonald and Season 2 cast member-turned-longtime writer James Downey were allegedly fired over an exec’s opposition to their O.J. Simpson jokes. In 2014, James told Vulture, “Well, that was all due to [NBC executive] Don Ohlmeyer. Norm Macdonald, the anchor for Weekend Update, and I were writing a lot of jokes about O.J. Simpson, and we had been doing so for more than three years. Don, being good friends with O.J., had just had enough.”
21.
Season 35 cast member Jenny Slate had an all-around poor experience at SNL, and after departing, she was followed by longstanding rumors that she was fired for accidentally swearing during a live broadcast. She told InStyle, “By the way, everyone always thinks I got fired for saying fuck: I didn’t, that’s not why I got fired. I just didn’t belong there. I didn’t do a good job, I didn’t click. I have no idea how Lorne felt about me. All I know is, it didn’t work for me, and I got fired.”
She continued, “I am a woman who has made so much of her own work, and I’ve had a variety of successes — some small, some personal, some public. I’m a New York Times best-selling children’s author, all of this stuff that is so intentional and worthy, but people often want to frame my success as an ascent from one failure that was the decision of some man who didn’t understand me 10 years ago. I just wonder, if I were a man, would people be so obsessed with the fact that I said a swear?”
22.
In the Peacock docuseries SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night, Seasons 22 to 28 cast member Tracy Morgan said, “I wanted to show them my world, how funny it was. But the first three years, I felt like I was being culturally isolated sometimes. I’m coming from a world of Blacks. I’m an inner-city kid. To be on the whitest show in America, I felt by myself. I felt like they weren’t getting it.”
“Lorne Michaels had that talk with me. He said, ‘Tracy, I hired you because you’re funny, not because you’re Black. So just do your thing.’ And that’s when I started doing my thing,” he said.
23.
Season 14 cast member Ben Stiller quit after just four episodes because the live broadcast made him nervous. He told the NYT podcast The Interview, “[Lorne Michaels] was like, ‘Okay. Ben’s gonna do what Ben’s gonna do.’ It wasn’t great, but I knew that I couldn’t do well there because I wasn’t great at live performing. I got too nervous. I didn’t enjoy it, and I wanted to be making short films. So, like, in the moment, there were reasons why, and I had this opportunity to do this MTV show.”
24.
And finally, Season 34 cast member Michaela Watkins told the podcast The Last Laugh, “I feel like it was a marathon, but the week I got there, they cut my Achilles. They’re like, ‘Okay, start running.’ I don’t feel like I came in into a soft landing at all. I thought that this was my big break. I thought that it was going well. I thought we were all having a good time, but then they didn’t renew my contract the next year. Maybe I was delusional. I really wanted to go back. I would have been really happy if they’d had me for three seasons. I felt like that would have been a really nice time there, but they had me for one. And then they had me no more. It does play out rather coolly, if I’m being honest. Everybody was presented with contracts except for two people. It is a little rude.”
