Most Embarrassing Cast Moments, Celebs Who Didn't Make It, And Other 25 Little-Known "SNL" Secrets

This year, Saturday Night Live, is officially celebrating its 50th season. The show, which first aired back in 1975, is one of the longest-running American television shows of all time. So, as a lifelong SNL super fan, I've decided to round up 27 behind-the-scenes facts, secrets, and cast stories I've learned over the years to celebrate their five decades on air:

1.In August of 2024, Bowen Yang appeared on Watch What Happens Live and revealed that one male celebrity host on SNL made "multiple cast members cry" during the table read because he hated their ideas. Three months later, castmember Chloe Fineman made a now-deleted video on TikTok revealing that the host in question was none other than Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Chloe had initially decided to stay quiet after Bowen's interview made the rounds online, but after Musk publicly criticized an impression of him on the show, she decided to speak up about his behavior. She said, "You made I, Chloe Fineman, burst into tears because I stayed up all night writing the sketch... I was so excited, I came in, I asked if you had any questions and you stared at me like you were firing me from Tesla and were like, ‘It’s not funny.' I waited for you to be like, ‘Ha ha, jk.’ No. Then you started pawing through my script, like flipping each page, being, like, ‘I didn’t laugh once, not one time.'"

The sketch reportedly made it to air during the episode.

2.The only reason Eddie Murphy didn’t get fired from the show with the rest of the cast after his first season was because head writer Michael O'Donoghue thought Eddie ate dog food live on air.

That year, Eddie went on "Weekend Update" to do a bit about old people eating dog food that he read in the newspaper. The "dog food" he was eating had actually been hash all along, but Michael didn't know that. So, at the end of that season, when Michael fired everyone but Eddie and Joe Piscopo, he said, "And the only reason Murphy didn't get fired was 'cause he ate that dog food!" Eddie revealed that it'd actually been hash, but he still kept his spot on the show.

3.Live, during an episode of SNL in 1977, Lorne Michaels — half-jokingly and half-not — offered the Beatles $3,000 to reunite on the show and sing three songs. A month later, he upped the offer to...$3,200 and a hotel accommodation, courtesy of NBC. Lorne joked, "You divide it any way you want. You want to give Ringo less, that's up to you."

According to this inflation calculator, $3,000 back then is roughly $15,700 in today's money.

Reportedly, John Lennon saw the episode of SNL and told Paul McCartney about it a week later when the show came on again. He suggested the two of them head down to the studio and take their share of the money themselves. As recalled by Paul, "So John said, 'It’s a hoot, you know what would be great, we can go down there now. It’s only around the corner, we should show up.' For about five minutes, we were going. ‘We’ve got to do it.’ Then it was like, ‘Are you kidding, let’s stay in and watch the show, stay comfortable, if we go down there it’s gonna be crazy. It would be a great story,’ but we decided against it."

4.A very pregnant Amy Poehler broke into tears at rehearsal the night before Jon Hamm was hosting, and he had the perfect words of advice for her: "Get your shit together."

Amy was due the next day, but she got a call during rehearsal that her OBGYN had passed away from a heart attack. The studio went silent while she broke into tears, but John had the perfect words of encouragement to break the tension. He said, "This is a really important show for me, I need you to get your shit together." Amy, of course, couldn't help but laugh.

5.In 2022, Dave Chappelle was hosting an episode of the show and made a joke during his dress rehearsal monologue that had Lorne Michaels and other producers receiving angry texts from writers and cast members alike, saying they felt "betrayed."

For reference, Dave had been under fire at the time for making anti-trans jokes, and a non-binary writer on SNL's staff asked, and was permitted, to sit out for the week. Page Six ran a story incorrectly stating that multiple writers were boycotting Dave's episode. Their source said, "They're not going to do the show," — meaning the non-binary writer was not; however, the publication interpreted it to mean multiple writers were boycotting.

In response, Dave reportedly made the following joke during dress rehearsal: "The papers got it wrong. Only one person has a problem, but the paper got confused because that person is a they." Dress rehearsal — which is also performed in front of a live studio audience — runs longer than the live show, so the crew can gauge the audience's reactions to jokes or sketches and make last-minute decisions as to what they should cut or keep in. Lorne reportedly told Dave to cut the joke so not to jeopardize relationships with the cast, and he did.

6.Larry David once stormed out of the studio and quit his job at SNL because his sketches never made it to air. He came back the following Monday like nothing had ever happened.

The last straw for Larry was when one of his sketches made it to dress rehearsal and was cut five minutes before the live show started. He yelled at producer Dick Ebersol, told him that he quit...and came back the next Monday like it'd never even happened in the first place. The incident went on to inspire an episode of Seinfeld.

7.When Paris Hilton hosted the show, Seth Meyers made a bet that he'd pay $1,000 to the first person she asked a personal question to.

Maya Rudolf got the closest when Paris asked her if she was Italian, but nobody got the money in the end.

8.Nasim Pedrad said the most embarrassing moment during her time on SNL was when she accidentally chipped Justin Timberlake's front tooth the morning of the show. She and Timberlake — who was hosting the show that night — were shooting a rom-com parody pre-tape that involved a pillow fight. Next thing she knew, her "knee accidentally launched into his face."

You can see the split-second pillow fight in the sketch here.

9.Will Ferrell accidentally punched Ellen DeGeneres in the face while rehearsing a sketch and gave her boxing headgear as an apology gift.

You can watch the interview where they talk about it here.

10.Bill Hader got kicked out of Kate McKinnon’s audition because he couldn’t stop laughing.

One of Lorne Michaels' rules for SNL auditions is that nobody is supposed to laugh. On Ellen, Hader explained that Kate was so funny, he "was laughing so hard, they were like, 'get Bill out of here!'"

11.Back in the day, it wasn't unusual for male writers on the show to pee in cups and leave them around their offices.

From a big jar of the stuff in the "Weekend Update" office to a bunch of small paper cups around Steve Higgins' office, Tina Fey explained in her The New Yorker piece that the difference between male and female comedy writers seems to be...leaving cups of pee around??

12.The night before her SNL audition, Cheri Oteri got awful food poisoning. She still showed up to the studio the next morning, but she looked and felt so awful that the makeup artist greeted her by saying, "Oh my God, what happened to you?"

Cheri went out to a famous Italian restaurant with Chris Kattan and Will Ferrell the night before her audition, and ended up wide awake the rest of the night with horrible food poisoning. She explained in the New York Times, "All the blood vessels in my eyes were broken, and the blood vessels in my face. I did not sleep...I looked like I was in a car accident."

13.Before the last show of season 27, the writers threw a wild party that ended with a spilled-punch slip 'n' slide, Horatio Sanz fracturing his ribs, and a towel full of vomit in front of Carson Daly's office.

Jimmy Fallon got the party started by sliding across the punch table as pictured above, and it wasn't long before everyone else lined up to join in on the fun. They even used pizza boxes as sleds, which caused them to gain so much speed that eventually, someone had to stand at the end of the table and catch people so nobody dove right out the 17th-floor window. By the end of the night, not only was the table broken, but Horatio ended up in the ER after fracturing his ribs when his dive didn't go quite as planned. You can watch Jimmy talk about "Tablegate" with Horatio and Seth Meyers.

14.Will Ferrell once wore the same outfit — Wrangler jeans, a Western shirt, a vest, and a trucker hat — for an entire season of SNL.

Will initially rocked the look for just two days as part of a “Smokey and the Bandit” parody. It was November at the time and one of the show's writers, Tom Gianas, dared him to wear it until the season ended. Will agreed and wore the outfit to work every day until the end of the season in May.

15.Fred Armisen and Bill Hader used to constantly prank call Seth Meyers at 4 a.m., pretending to be on a radio show.

Seth worked some wild hours when he was one of the show's head writers, but that didn't stop his castmates from waking him up in the middle of the night for a good laugh. Fred's recurring bit was that he was being phone interviewed on a radio show and had accidentally given out Seth's number.

16.According to Leslie Jones, sometimes Kenan Thompson would purposely tell her the wrong camera was filming her. He did it so that whenever she'd break character and try to turn away from the camera, she was actually facing the one that was live head-on.

Leslie spoke about this specifically in the episode Melissa McCarthy was on. In addition to Kenan's antics, she said Melissa was determined to make her break.

17.In a 1983 episode, SNL Executive Producer Dick Ebersol had the audience vote on whether or not they should keep cast member Andy Kaufman on the show. They had other cast members repeatedly read two 900 phone numbers — one that viewers could call and vote to keep Andy, and another they could call to vote for him to be kicked off the show. At the end of the episode when the cast said their goodnights, the votes were revealed, and viewers ultimately voted to kick Andy off the show for good.

Andy got 195,544 total votes not to return to the show again and 169,186 to stay. Afterwards, Andy bought ad space on TV (though only in states like Georgia, Iowa, and Nebraska due to the price) to plead his case for being un-banned. His attempts, however, did not work.

Just over a year after his banning, Andy died from a rare lung cancer. You can read more about it all here.

18.Lorne Michaels once cut a sketch from airing because then–presidential hopeful Barack Obama thought it was funny but too controversial.

The "TV Funhouse" sketch — which was about racial profiling of an Arab man on an airplane — caused quite a stir between the writers and the show's standards team. Obama was already on set for a cameo in the cold open, and Michaels decided that if Obama gave it the all-clear, they'd have to let the sketch run. While he did think it was funny, Obama ultimately decided it was a little too controversial in the end. You can read more about the infamous sketch here.

19.The first time John Mulaney was on camera, he missed his cue because he and Bobby Moynihan were so excited, they couldn’t stop high-fiving.

You can watch the Activia commercial sketch here and listen to Mulaney talk about his time as a writer on SNL here.

20.Rachel Dratch once threw her back out in the middle of a read-through, so Johnny Knoxville reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of loose pills to offer her.

Rachel, being the icon that she is, spent the rest of the read-through lying on the floor under the table and shouting her lines to the room of 100+ people. According to Amy Poehler, she killed it, too. Johnny, who was hosting that week, tried to help by offering her some of the loose pills from his pocket. As Amy explains, "There were no tags, no names... And he looked at me and went 'these are all uppers, these aren't going to work.'" Amy thought it was all so funny, she used it as inspiration for a scene in her movie Wine Country.

21.Mike Schur — who co-created Parks and Rec and Brooklyn Nine-Nine — also wrote for SNL for a time. His very first week on the show, he contributed one single joke to one single sketch with Tracy Morgan, Samuel L. Jackson, and Will Ferrell in it. Will said the line, and it was a hit, so Mike thought, "Okay, if I get fired tomorrow, I can say I actually wrote for Saturday Night Live." However, his name was spelled wrong in the credits.

The sketch was about evaluating the Titanic, and Will's character yelled out to passengers to board the lifeboats; first class, then second, then third, then pets, etc. Mike's joke that made it in was, "All empty lifeboats should now be placed into other lifeboats!" You can watch the clip for yourself here.

22.Will Ferrell had a face-to-face meeting with Michaels before his callback, so naturally Ferrell showed up with a briefcase full of counterfeit money to prank him.

Will told the New York Times that his plan was to pile $25,000 worth of fake money on Lorne's desk in the middle of the meeting and say something along the lines of, "Listen, Lorne, you and I can say whatever we want to say. But we really know what talks, and that’s money. I’m going to walk out of this room, and you can either take this money or not. And I can be on the show." In the end, the vibe of the meeting was much less laid-back than Will had been expecting, so he didn't go through with his genius plan after all.

23.Aidy Bryant once returned from the bathroom to find that Kate McKinnon had been dancing around with a hammer and knocked a hole into the wall of their office.

The SNL offices were being renovated, and Kate had heard that the walls and everything were going to be torn down. So, naturally, she and a friend danced around with a hammer and knocked a big hole into her office wall to celebrate. Aidy came back from the bathroom with some unfortunate news — the walls were just being painted, not torn down.

24.In 1978 — minutes before the show started — cast member Bill Murray and the former cast member and then-host Chevy Chase got into a physical altercation in John Belushi's dressing room. Bill had been hired after Chevy's departure from the show to take the latter's place. Speaking to Howard Stern, Chevy said, "And basically, words were said — just before the show in the makeup room — and he got me really pissed... I was ready to level him, and he was probably ready to scratch me up."

Chevy also noted that he'd likely been feeling cocky at the time after his year of fame. On Watch What Happens Live, SNL cast members Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman — who'd watched the fight backstage that night — said, "You could understand, you know, there were these two bull mooses going at each other, so the testosterone was surging and stuff happens."

Though the two have never been particularly close, they starred in Caddyshack together two years after their quarrel and have been friendly ever since.

25.When Bill Hader hosted in 2018, John Mulaney made an appearance on “Weekend Update” where he tried to make Bill break by whispering “My girlfriend works at Yoshinoya Beef Bowl” in his ear.

John was one of Stefon's creators and had a history of adding jokes into his "Weekend Update" appearances at the last minute to make Bill break character. Even though John was on screen this time, he was still determined to make Bill laugh. You can watch the sketch here.

26.Tons of well-known celebs today — like Jennifer Coolidge, Mindy Kaling, Aubrey Plaza, Lisa Kudrow, Stephen Colbert, and Jordan Peele, to name a few — auditioned for the show way back in the day and didn't make the cut.

Some of them — like Aubrey and Stephen — worked on the show in freelance or intern capacities, while others — like Donald — cite their rejections as one the reasons their careers were able to take off the way they did. You can learn all about their auditions here.

27.And finally, according to Amy Poehler, her most embarrassing moment was when John Goodman flipped her over his shoulder and into a dumpster for a sketch, and she passed out in there for a full minute.

It's giving Leslie Knope in the pit, TBH.

You can watch SNL's 50th-anniversary celebrations — which include a concert on Friday, 2/14, a re-airing of its first episode on Saturday, 2/15, and a three-hour anniversary special on 2/15 — on NBC and Peacock.