Creative frustration, boorish co-workers, and incredibly hurtful comments: it all adds up to Saturday Night Live being one of the worst jobs of these stars' careers.
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00:00Creative frustration, boorish co-workers, and incredibly hurtful comments.
00:05It all adds up to Saturday Night Live being one of the worst jobs of these stars' careers.
00:10Before he was Saul Goodman, Bob Odenkirk began his career as an SNL staff writer from 1987
00:16to 1991, occasionally making small appearances on camera.
00:20But he was young and not exactly full of confidence.
00:23As he admitted on the podcast Don't Ask Tig in 2023,
00:27"...I was unsure of myself.
00:29It was hard.
00:30It was existentially dangerous.
00:32It's hard for kids to believe you when you say, I had no f-----g clue what I was doing
00:36and I was scared out of my wits for years."
00:38Odenkirk also developed what he believes was a defeating, self-righteous attitude.
00:43He particularly opposed one of the most famous SNL sketches of all time, in which Chris Farley
00:48auditioned for a spot in the Chippendales dance troupe alongside Patrick Swayze.
00:52As Odenkirk wrote in his autobiography, Comedy, Comedy, Drama, Drama,
00:56"...writers I knew and respected defended this sketch because it had a funny-ish idea
01:00buried in it.
01:01The Chippendales judges prefer Swayze's dancing over Chris's but can't put a finger on why.
01:07But that idea is not what produced the gales of cackling and gasps from the live audience.
01:11Chris flopping his overstuffed body around did that."
01:15During Barack Obama's presidency, SNL needed someone to play him on a regular basis, which
01:20was a big reason why Jay Pharoah was hired in 2010.
01:24In addition to his Obama, Pharoah showcased uncanny impressions of Kanye West, Jay-Z,
01:29and Denzel Washington.
01:30After seven years in the cast, NBC announced Pharoah's abrupt exit in the summer of 2016,
01:36implying that he left to seek bigger and better jobs.
01:39But half a year later, Pharoah clarified that SNL had fired him, following a prolonged period
01:44of him feeling like his skills weren't being fully utilized.
01:47As he explained on Hot 97's Ebro in the Morning,
01:50"...you have multiple people on the cast saying things like, you're so talented and you're
01:54able, and they don't use you, and it's unfair and it's making us feel bad because they don't
01:58use you, and you're like, you're a talent."
02:00"...they put people into boxes, and, you know, whatever they want you to do, they expect
02:09you to do."
02:10In addition to voicing multiple characters on The Simpsons and serving as a regular in
02:14Christopher Guest's mockumentary movies, Harry Shearer was also an SNL cast member,
02:19and he's one of the few people to perform on the show in two separate runs.
02:23He was initially hired in 1979 as a featured player for its fifth season before returning
02:28for its tenth season in 1984.
02:30But it wasn't exactly a pleasant environment.
02:32As he described his first stint to IGN in 2000,
02:35"...living hell.
02:37The way it was organized, the way people were treated, the approach to the material.
02:41It was about as far from pleasant as you can possibly get.
02:44It was extremely challenging."
02:46When Shearer returned in the fall of 1984, he was joined by his This Is Spinal Tap co-star
02:51Christopher Guest.
02:52But as Shearer soon realized,
02:54"...I thought things had changed, and found to my dismay that they hadn't."
02:59When SNL creator Lorne Michaels returned to the show in 1985 after five years away, one
03:04of his first new hires he made was Chicago comedy theater veteran Nora Dunn.
03:08She'd never appeared on screen before her SNL debut, but she quickly rose to the challenge
03:12and over the next five seasons became one of the show's most reliable utility stars.
03:17But Dunn's most famous moment at SNL was much more acrimonious.
03:21In 1990, she refused to appear in an episode hosted by stand-up comedian Andrew Dice Clay
03:27in protest of his boorish humor, which Dunn believed was misogynistic.
03:31That was certainly a rough moment, but the rest of Dunn's stint wasn't exactly a piece
03:35of cake, either.
03:36As she told Salon in 2015,
03:38"...SNL is a traumatic experience.
03:41It's kind of something you have to survive, and you really have to learn.
03:44I made a lot of mistakes."
03:45So here you have this dysfunctional family with a house guest pretending that everything
03:50is so great.
03:51Jay Moore
03:52Jay Moore joined SNL as both a writer and featured player in the fall of 1993.
03:57At the time, the show had 16 cast members, and Moore had a tough time getting himself
04:02on the air.
04:03He was beset by so much workplace anxiety that he feared he would lose the job that
04:06was supposed to be his big break.
04:08His solution?
04:09He ended up stealing a bit from another comedian.
04:12As he admitted in his memoir, Gasping for Airtime,
04:14"...I took Rick Shapiro's act and wrote it down word for word and submitted it as my
04:19sketch."
04:20The sketch, entitled O'Callaghan and Son, made it into the March 18, 1995 episode hosted
04:25by Paul Reiser.
04:27Shapiro was a fairly prominent New York comedian at the time, and it didn't take long before
04:31Moore's bosses at SNL figured out what he'd done.
04:34O'Callaghan and Son was subsequently removed from reruns, and Moore was fired at the end
04:39of the season.
04:40Janine Garofalo
04:41A leader of the 90s alternative comedy scene, Janine Garofalo took a big step in her career
04:45in 1994 by joining the cast of SNL.
04:49The show was in flux at the time, dealing with a ratings shortfall and seeking a soft
04:53reboot by hiring well-known comedians like Garofalo.
04:56But before any of her episodes even aired, she publicly expressed her grievances with
05:00the show.
05:02In an interview with the New York Observer, she called the previous season unwatchable.
05:05She also singled out her new castmate Adam Sandler, calling his characters childish.
05:10In a March 1995 feature story for New York Magazine detailing the backstage drama at
05:15SNL, Garofalo said that working at the show was, quote, the most miserable experience
05:20of my life.
05:21She turned to cigarettes and vodka to cope.
05:23She was also fed up with Sandler and other cast members' insistence on making fun of
05:27gay people.
05:28As she put it,
05:29They love the anal sex here.
05:31That's considered incredibly funny.
05:33I have anal warts.
05:35It wasn't long before Garofalo had had enough, as she quit after 14 episodes.
05:40It can take a while for a new SNL cast member to make a big impact on the show, but Jenny
05:45Slate accomplished that on her very first episode, just not for the reasons she hoped
05:49for.
05:50During the season 35 premiere in September 2009, Slate appeared in a sketch called Biker
05:55Chick Chat.
05:56Slate featured salty motorcycle enthusiasts who liberally peppered their speech with profanity,
06:01except that since this was airing on network TV, they had to say frickin' instead of anything
06:05more explicit.
06:07Slate accidentally dropped an F-bomb, realized her own mistake, and then visibly sighed.
06:12But she wasn't fired, at least not right away.
06:15Slate rode out the rest of the season, appearing in sketches from time to time, but never enjoying
06:19a real breakout moment.
06:21When the season ended, she wasn't offered a chance to return for another year, which
06:25led to widespread speculation that the F-word incident led to her dismissal.
06:29But as she told InStyle in 2019,
06:31"...everyone always thinks I got fired for saying f-----.
06:34I didn't.
06:35That's not why I got fired.
06:37I just didn't belong there.
06:38I didn't do a good job.
06:40I didn't click.
06:41I have no idea how Lorne Michaels felt about me.
06:43All I know is, it didn't work for me, and I got fired."
06:46"'I was not suited to the environment.
06:48I didn't like it.
06:49I was really uncomfortable."
06:51K.C. Wilson joined SNL in January 2008, but she wasn't utilized very often over her one-and-a-half
06:58years on the show.
06:59She was usually cast in sketches for her vague physical resemblance to various celebrities,
07:03but she was also haunted by body image issues during her tenure.
07:07After multiple agents urged Wilson to lose weight, she did so and secured both the SNL
07:11gig and a role in the movie Julie and Julia on the same day.
07:15But as she wrote in her book, The Wreckage of My Presence,
07:18"...I'm not sure I would have gotten them if I hadn't lost the weight."
07:22In addition to the stress of SNL and the comments about her body, Wilson was also grieving the
07:26death of her mother.
07:27To cope, she overate and regained the weight that she'd lost.
07:31She wasn't asked back to the show for a third season.
07:34As she admitted,
07:35"'I felt a rush of relief and utter disappointment in myself.
07:38I had the chance and I didn't take my shot, but I never cried.
07:42The relief outweighed the regret.'"
07:44It eventually came out that Wilson was indeed fired because of her weight.
07:48She wrote,
07:49"'That was the night I cried.
07:50I wailed.
07:51I've never been more humiliated or felt more exposed.'"
07:54It was great, but it was hard.
07:58Well before his career-defining stints on Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David
08:03was hired as a writer for SNL in 1984.
08:06But as the weeks wore on, he grew increasingly frustrated by his inability to get any of
08:10his ideas onto the show, even though his sketches were well-received at the read-throughs.
08:20The last straw came when one of David's sketches was cut by producer Dick Ebersole five minutes
08:24before airtime.
08:34As David walked home, he realized that he'd just left a well-paying job and also violated
08:38his contract with NBC.
08:40His neighbor advised him to go back to work on Monday and pretend like he'd never quit.
08:44The gambit worked.
08:45Nobody wanted to call him out, and a couple of weeks later, he got his one and only sketch
08:49on the air — a bit about an architect who wants to build a stool into an elevator so
08:54that the operator has a spot to relax.
08:56That concept later inspired the plot of a Seinfeld episode, as did David's experience
09:01of quitting and pretending like it never happened.
09:04After performing for years with the influential Los Angeles comedy troupe The Groundlings,
09:16Michaela Watkins got the call to join SNL in 2008.
09:20As that was an election year, she ended up most frequently making appearances as TV journalists
09:24like Barbara Walters and Ariana Huffington.
09:27She spent the season as a featured player, but wasn't asked back to return the following
09:31year.
09:32With her background in producing comedy on a tight timeline, Watkins had a hard time
09:36getting started at SNL, although she felt that she was starting to find her footing.
09:40As she told The Daily Beast in 2020,
09:42"...I feel like it was a marathon, but the week I got there, they cut my Achilles.
09:47They're like, OK, start running.
09:49I don't feel like I came in into a soft landing at all.
09:52I thought we were all having a good time, but then they didn't renew my contract the
09:56next year.
09:57Maybe I was delusional.
09:59I really wanted to go back.
10:00I would have been really happy if they'd had me for three seasons."
10:04Zach Galifianakis made his SNL debut as a host in March 2010, elevated to mainstream
10:09success by the blockbuster comedy The Hangover, but he had history with the show.
10:14After auditioning as a performer in 1999, he received a job offer to join the show near
10:18the end of the 1999-2000 season.
10:22When he reported to work, he discovered that he hadn't actually been hired as a cast member,
10:26but instead as writer on a probationary basis.
10:29Galifianakis wrote one piece in which Will Ferrell played the bodyguard of guest host
10:33Britney Spears' belly button, but it bombed at the table read.
10:37"...I remember, like, it was so silent.
10:38I remember hearing the AC, like it shut down during the middle of the sketch."
10:44That sketch didn't make it to air, and neither did anything else Galifianakis wrote.
10:49After just two weeks, he was let go.