Adrien Brody Claims He Wasn't Banned from “SNL” After Infamous Jamaican Bit But Says He's 'Never Been Invited Back'

Adrien Brody is not banned from Saturday Night Live — at least, as far as he knows.

The actor, 51, hosted the show in May 2003, and infamously introduced musical guest Sean Paul, who hails from Jamaica, in a bizarre Jamaican accent while wearing dreadlocks. He's never returned to the late-night sketch comedy show, but in an interview with Vulture, he denied being banned from it, per se.

"But I also have never been invited back on, so I don’t know what to tell you," he said when asked about the show.

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Brody admitted that he thinks Lorne Michaels "wasn't happy with me embellishing a bit" but clarified the show "allowed" him to introduce the singer the way he did.

"I thought that was a safe space to do that, weirdly," he said.

PEOPLE has reached out to a spokesperson for Saturday Night Live for comment.

In the 40-second introduction, instead of following the typical script, which would have been for Brody to say, "Ladies and gentleman, Sean Paul," Brody repeated a series of stereotypical Jamaican phrases, beginning with "Ya mon," and including a mention of Rastafari and a series of jokes about the musician's family all being named iterations of "Sean." Mixed into the introduction were also a few mentions about having a "great show" for the audience, a common thing for SNL hosts to say.

Brody told Vulture that he pitched quite a few sketches in the lead-up to his hosting gig, including the unusual Sean Paul introduction, and recalled the cast being "literally agape from me pitching" the idea.

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Brody is far from the only star to have had a headline-making SNL performance. More than a decade earlier, Irish singer Sinéad O'Connor had an arguably even more controversial moment when she was the musical guest, as she ripped up a photo of Pope John Paul II at the end of her performance of "War" by Bob Marley.

"Fight the real enemy," she told the audience after ripping the photo.

Following the stunt, Michaels called for the studio's "Applause" sign to not be lit and O'Connor was banned for life from NBC. The clip of her ripping up the picture was also not shown in reruns of the SNL episode.

In her 2021 book Rememberings, O'Connor, who died in July 2023 at age 56, affirmed she had no regrets about the moment, writing, "A lot of people say or think that tearing up the pope's photo derailed my career. That's not how I feel about it. I feel that having a number-one record derailed my career and my tearing the photo put me back on the right track."

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O'Connor also told PEOPLE that same year that she had "a pretty good feeling" that the move would generate a response. "Part to me just as an artist, particularly an Irish artist — there's a tradition in Irish art, particularly among playwrights, there used to be riots in the streets over the plays. This is a tradition in Irish art of the type of, 'Let's see what happens if.' So there was a part of me that was curious to see what would happen."

She was, in her words, "well aware there would be [backlash]" and she accepted that. "I understood it, because we joke in Ireland or in Europe that Americans, they don't think anything happened until it happened to them. So I totally understood. I didn't blame anyone."

Read the original article on People