‘SNL’ Insiders Reveal Why Huge Comedy Stars Didn’t Get Hired

The new documentary SNL50 reveals why several of comedy’s biggest stars weren’t hired after their auditions for the show, including Jim Carrey, Stephen Colbert, Jennifer Coolidge, and more.

SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night, a four-part docuseries honoring the legacy of Saturday Night Live that will stream on Peacock starting January 16, shows Saturday Night Live producers dishing on why several stars never made the cut when they were first trying to launch their careers.

Marci Klein, a producer and head of talent at the show from 1995 to 2012, tells the camera, “There’s a lot of people that I brought in and I’m like, I can’t believe we’re not hiring that person.”

“There are definitely a couple people who are incredibly successful both in film and TV who came in and did an audition, and didn’t end up getting picked,” Jeff Blake, co-producer and talent exec for SNL since 2012, says in the series.

The montage of SNL-hopefuls starts with Carrey, who auditioned twice for the show—once in 1980-1981 season and again for the 1984-1985 season. Carrey joined the Wayans-produced sketch comedy series In Living Color in 1990, and his career took off from there.

“I wasn’t at the Jim Carrey audition. Somebody who was there said, ‘I don’t think Lorne would like it,’ and they were probably wrong,” the show’s executive producer Lorne Michaels told Vanity Fair around the show’s 40th anniversary.

In Coolidge’s case, Klein explains in the doc, though she was “so funny” during her audition, Klein “couldn’t get anybody to get it.” Klein says she soothed her disappointment at not being able to push some talent over the finish line after an audition by telling herself, “Anyone who doesn’t end up on this show ends up doing [very well], don’t worry about it.”

That’s when the series rolls the auditions of Kevin Hart, The Office star Mindy Kaling, Atlanta creator and star Donald Glover, and Key & Peele star turned screenwriter and director Jordan Peele.

Colbert is among the failed auditions forced to watch his own audition tape on screen in the documentary. “I feel perfectly fine with that effort and I probably felt OK then,” he says after a clip from his tape plays, “Until I didn’t get it.”

“For whatever reason, it didn’t happen,” Klein says of Colbert’s audition, but “obviously he’s doing great” as an Emmy-winning late-night host.

The producers attempt to explain how they could have missed these major talents, with Lindsay Shookus, SNL producer from 2012 to 2022 adding, “I wish there was a formula, like, ‘Oh, if you get three of the five characters, we’re hiring them.’ Sometimes we would and sometimes we wouldn’t.”

Like Michaels told Vanity Fair in 2015 as he tried to explain why Carrey wasn’t cast, “No one gets it all right.” Other notable celebs SNL passed on back in the day include Lisa Kudrow, Kathy Griffin, and Steve Carell.

Of course, even those who did make it into SNL’s cast don’t seem to enjoy the experience of watching their audition tapes very much.

At first, Amy Poehler refuses to watch her own audition in the series. “I don’t think I do [want to see it], here’s why. I have a nice feeling about it and I don’t think I’m going to have that feeling after I watch it,” she says. She eventually allows producers to play it for just “one minute,” before she says, “Oof” and “OK, that’s enough.”

Pete Davidson mocks himself as he watches his own audition tape, telling the camera, “Look how high my shoulders are” and asking, “How the f--- did I get this show?”

Kenan Thompson, the show’s longest running cast member, has a similar reaction as he cringes his way through his audition tape. “Wrap it up,” he tells his auditioning self as the tape rolls, calling his performance “98 percent bulls--t.”

But current cast member Heidi Gardner had a different kind of emotional response to seeing her audition. “Oh my gosh, did other people cry?” she asks producers, welling up after her tape concludes. “I just had never seen that at all. And I didn’t think I could because I was scared I would be a little too critical,” she continues.

Instead, she finds herself more proud than anything, she says, explaining through tears, “I just can’t believe I did that. That’s a lot of pressure.”