The 1980 ‘Saturday Night Live’ host who hated it so much they made Gary Oldman turn it down: “Don’t do it!”
Being asked to host Saturday Night Live can be a poisoned chalice, and nobody knows how good anyone will be at the job until they do it. That said, an actor hating it so much they talked Gary Oldman out of following suit indicates that they must have really fucking hated it.
To this day, Oldman has never appeared on SNL, despite spending decades earning his stripes as one of his generation’s best actors. He was supposed to once, but he backed out at the last second citing personal reasons, but it sounds as though that wasn’t the full extent of the story.
In November 22nd, 1980, the show endured one of its worst-ever episodes, one that former NBC executive Brandon Tartikoff summarily described as a “disaster” that left him “appalled” when A Clockwork Orange star Malcolm McDowell was brought in to serve as the latest guest compere.
An utter shitshow from start to finish, more than four and a half decades later, and it’s still regarded as one of the worst episodes in SNL’s long and often patchy history, with the ‘Commie Hunting Season’ sketch lurking right at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to the most egregious skits that ever made the airwaves.
Going down like a lead balloon, and doing Saturday Night Live no favours whatsoever when the ratings were already heading on a downward trajectory, as you’d expect, McDowell’s hosting gig was a one-time thing. However, a dozen years later, he went out of his way to instruct Oldman that he shouldn’t do it.
On December 5th, 1992, less than a month after the release of Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula, the actor had been lined up to help promote his smouldering turn as the iconic vampire by taking the stage at Studio 8H. A quick word in his ear later, and he was out, with Tom Arnold drafted in as his replacement.
Arnold even cracked a joke about it, acknowledging that Oldman had jumped ship for personal reasons, adding, “Personally, he hates the show.” In 1997, the cat was eventually let out of the bag when McDowell reflected on his disastrous contributions to the late-night comedy staple, confirming the urban legend.
“I was very disappointed with it, because it was appallingly written,” he confessed. “I would never do it again. Gary Oldman called me years later and said, ‘They want me to do SNL‘, and I went, ‘Don’t do it!’ You can’t win on that one. You are at the mercy of these writers, and if they can’t come up with anything, you’re dead. I don’t think he did it.”
He did not, and he still hasn’t. Since Oldman has idolised McDowell since the early 1970s and called him one of his biggest influences and inspirations, when the latter told the former not to bother his arse hosting Saturday Night Live, he took him at his word, no questions asked.
