Bill Hader’s first experience in Hollywood was also his worst: “It was the biggest fuck you”
It’s been 20 years since Bill Hader launched his career on Saturday Night Live, and something will have to go seriously wrong for the actor and comedian to have a more miserable time than he did during his first time in Hollywood.
A cinephile from an early age, Hader’s taste in movies has always betrayed his persona: he became famous for doing impressions and leaving audiences in stitches with some of SNL‘s most memorable skits in recent memory, but his film preferences are a million miles away from his star-making schtick.
He had to scratch and claw his way to success, admitting that his grades weren’t good enough to get him accepted into film school, and he worked various jobs before deciding to take the plunge, pack his bags, and move to Los Angeles. Hader was willing to take any job, even tangentially associated with the industry, which he came to regret fairly quickly.
His first notable gig was working as a production assistant, which included titles like Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Collateral Damage, but he also found work as a chauffeur to the stars. Or, at least, people who used to be stars, namely, The Karate Kid trilogy’s Martin Kove.
He wasn’t exactly a big deal in the ’90s, with most of his acting jobs going straight-to-video, but he still needed someone to ferry him to and from the set. That’s where Hader came in, and one unfortunate drive will remain permanently seared into his memory after Kove seemingly decided to be a dickhead for no reason.
“I’m driving him around in my shitty car, and he got me lost on purpose,” Hader explained to Marc Maron. When he eventually brought the actor to his destination, his boss gave him a bollocking for turning up late, only for Kove to make things much worse on the return trip.
“It’s at night, and we’re driving down the freeway. He was like, ‘Bill, are you mad at me?'” He said he wasn’t, even though he was, so Kove decided to make a peace offering by suggesting they swing by a McDonald’s to get milkshakes and cookies. Technically, they did, but not in the way that was promised.
“This is the guy from Karate Kid. This is my first Hollywood experience,” Hader said. “He goes, ‘There’s a McDonald’s right up there. Pull over, and we’ll get you a cookie. We’ll get a milkshake.'” When Kove returned, he was eating the cookie and drinking the milkshake he’d promised his driver.
“It was the biggest fuck you,” the Barry creator offered. “It was a weird mindfuck of, like, ‘I’m gonna get you this thing,’ and then he ate it in front of me. And then I just drove home in silence.” Did he quit as Kove’s driver after that? Remarkably, he didn’t, but he did confirm that from that point on, none of their journeys down the freeway together involved any sort of conversation, or even eye contact.
While Hader opined that “he might be a really nice guy,” biting one of his co-stars at a Cobra Kai event tells a different story.
