Yahoo Lifestyle Jenny Slate Revealed The Real Reason She Got Fired From "Saturday Night Live," And 13 Other SNL Cast Members Who Got The Boot
Joining the cast of Saturday Night Live is a major dream come true for many up-and-coming comedians and actors. However, not everyone can be Kenan Thompson, who's the show's longest-running cast member.
Here are 14 actors who got fired from SNL:
1.On the fourth episode of Peacock's docuseries SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night, 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 Season 11, he went off-book during the live-tapping 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."
Damon went on to co-create and star in the sketch show In Living Color. He also hosted SNL in 1995.
Here's the sketch that got Damon fired:
2.In 2019, Season 35 cast member Jenny Slate shut down longstanding rumors that she was fired from SNL a decade prior after 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?"
Here's the clip Jenny was referring to:
3.After five years on the show, Norm Macdonald was fired alongside James Downey in 1998. 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."
James continued, "Yeah, we weren't holding back. That's the thing I kind of liked about Don, actually: his friendship with O.J. was so old school. It was so un-showbizzy. He ended up firing me, as well as Norm, but I can't honestly say that a part of me doesn't respect Don for his loyalty. Most people in show business would sell out anyone in their lives for any reason at all, including for practice. Don was the opposite. He threw a party for the jurors after the 1995 acquittal. And he stuck with O.J. through it all.
I don't know that Norm enjoyed the experience of the firing quite as much as I did, but to me it was exciting. It was certainly the best press I ever received. We got tremendous support from people I really admire, some of whom are friends and some I didn't really know that well but who stepped up and called me. It was a fun time."
Here's one of the jokes James was referring to:
4.After six seasons, Jay Pharoh's contract wasn't renewed in 2016. The following year, 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.
He also 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."
Here's an example of one of Jay's most famous impressions, President Barack Obama:
5.After six seasons, Adam Sandler "kind of quit at the same time as being fired" in 1995.
Nine years later, he told the Daily Beast, "It was the end of the run for us."
When he hosted the show in 2019, he joked about his firing in his monologue.
Here's one of Adam's most iconic SNL performances, "The Chanukah Song":
6.Adam Sandler's best friend, Chris Farley, was fired alongside him.
In 2014, Adam told the Daily Beast, "The fact that me and him got fired? Who knows. We were on it for a few years, had our run, and everything happens for a reason. We kind of understood because we did our thing. It hurt a lot at the time because we were young and didn't know where we were going, but it all worked out."
Chris hosted the show in 1997.
Here's one of Chris's most popular sketches:
7.As an already established name, Robert Downey Jr. was hired for SNL Season 8 to draw in new viewers. However, after ratings dropped to the lowest they'd ever been, Lorne Michaels fired Robert alongside most of the cast.
In 2019, he told The Off-Camera Show, "I learned so much in that year about what I wasn't. I was not somebody who was going to come up with a catchphrase. I was not somebody who was going to do impressions. I was somebody who was very ill-suited for rapid-fire sketch comedy. I was not of that ilk of The Groundlings. I'd never been part of any improv group, so I was kinda like, 'Wow, this seems really hard and like a lot of work.' But I would still say that, to this day, there's not a more exciting 90 you can have, whether you are any good or not."
He hosted the show in 1996.
Here's a sketch from his time on the show:
8.Joan Cusack was also let go at the same time as Robert Downey Jr. In 2000, she 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," she said.
Here's one of her sketches:
9.After three years on the show, Chris Rock "got fired because [he] was leaving to go to In Living Color."
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."
He went on to host the show four times between 1996-2024.
Here's a sketch from Chris's time on the show:
10.Season 34 cast member Michaela Watkins was let go in 2009. She told Entertainment Weekly, "The only explanation I got from [Lorne] — and he's not known to say things just to make people feel better — was that he felt deep down that I should have my own show. And I agreed. SNL was a dream come true for me. It was a fantastic year. I don't have any regrets."
She continued, "What he said is he's trying to get what's best for him and best for me. He said it had nothing to do with talent. And I'm just going to go on that. That was his only explanation. He's looking at the whole mix of the show, and maybe he feels that what I bring would be better served on a sitcom. They hired two new gals [Jenny Slate and Nasim Pedrad] that I think are going to be exquisite."
Here's a sketch from her time on the show:
11.Season 19 cast member Sarah Silverman "was hired at SNL and almost immediately fired." In 2013, she told HuffPost Live, "It wasn't like I did something wrong. I was hired, and the following season, they fired — it was like a whole new kind of — I was, I think, that last year of the Old Guard, and they started anew."
"And by the way, I wrote not a single funny sketch, so that might have something to do with it too," she added.
She hosted the show in 2014.
Here's a "Weekend Update" clip from her time on the show:
12.After six years, Taran Killam's contract wasn't renewed in 2016. He told Uproxx, "I don't know fully. I don't know the other side of it. You sign for seven years, so I had one more year. I had sort of had it in my head I would make this upcoming year my last year, but then heard they weren't going to pick up my contract. I was never given a reason why, really. I can assume until the cows come home. But I do know I'm directing this movie [Why We're Killing Gunther], and I'll have two months of post-production that would have bled into the SNL production schedule, so we kind of communicated that."
He continued, "I honestly don't know what happened on the other side, but I do know we had expressed I have work on this film and in bonding this picture, that has to get cleared with SNL. And then [another offer] came up. I wasn't going to have to take any time off to do it, but it was a thing that they would have had to okay."
Here's a compilation from Taran's time on SNL:
13.Season 6 cast member Laurie Metcalf was only on the show for one episode before the 1981 WGA strike halted the season. She wasn't asked to return for Season 7.
She only appeared in a pre-taped "Weekend Update" segment.
However, in 1988, she returned for a sketch with Catherine O'Hara:
14.And finally, Chris Parnell was fired from SNL twice — first in 2001 for unknown reasons, then in 2006 because of budget cuts. After his initial firing, he was quickly brought back.
In a 2015 Reddit AMA, he said, "You know, as I understand it, both Will [Ferrell] and [Chris' Kattan went to bat for me to Lorne. And I think it certainly helped. And I know one of the writers T. Sean Shannon, he wrote a scathing sketch that was read (at the table, I understand it) that condemned my firing, and took everyone to task about it. Yeah, I never knew exactly why I was fired? I heard from somebody it might have been an NBC executive who didn't care for my stuff? But i think Will and Chris went to bat for me, which definitely helped.
It was crazy. It was a very difficult time. But I was very glad to go back to the show."
Here's a clip from his time on the show:
Which actor do you think deserved a longer tenure on SNL? Why? Share your thoughts in the comments!
