Did Steve Carell suffer the most painfully awkward rejection in ‘Saturday Night Live’ history?
As the showrunner of Saturday Night Live (SNL), Lorne Michaels has made an awful lot of careers since the series began in 1975. He has helmed the show for the entirety of its run with the exception of a five-year hiatus from 1980 to 1985. During that time, he has welcomed legends like Norm McDonald, Chris Farley, and Tina Fey… and more than the occasional dud too.
With a plethora of big stars making their names on the show, it is not surprising that many comics see it as the equivalent of a driving test that you simply must pass if you ever want to be a racer. The famed SNL audition has now been mythologised as some holy grail of comic stardom, but the plethora of talent that has slipped through the cracks over the years proves that isn’t necessarily the case.
Sadly, for Steve Carell, he might have proved that you can slip through the cracks and still make it, but he did so in the most painfully awkward fashion. Comedy circles are often portrayed as lovely, tight, backstabbing communities; however, Carell’s circle was even more close-knit than that. In 1995 Carell and his wife Nancy Walls auditioned together for the show—the worst possible thing happened.
Nancy passed with flying colours, but Carell lost out to Will Ferrell in that year’s limited roster. The celebratory dinner that evening had a large asterisk applied to it. It’s well regarded that relationships are about supporting each other, and I’m sure in time Carell was delighted, but I’ll be damned if he wasn’t also truly dashed for a moment.
It also prompted him to be more diplomatic when it comes to marriage, stating: “I think in most relationships that have problems, there’s fault on both sides. And in order for it to work, there has to be some common ground that’s shared. And it’s not just one person making amends.”
Naturally, for the rest of his career, he has been reminded of this bump, but fortunately, it is little more than a pothole on memory lane given that Carell is now pretty much the most universally loved paper merchant manager in history.
And what’s more, he also joins a superb list of talent rejected by SNL including John Goodman, Lisa Kudrow, Adam McKay, Jennifer Coolidge, Zach Galifianakis and Jim damn Carrey. Or did he really join this list…?
This was the official story of his rejection for years, and when Carell first hosted the show, they even ran with it as the lengthy bit in his opening monologue. Since this story became taken as gospel after the fact, Carell turned to dish out the real details, stating, “Sad to say..I never auditioned for SNL. Would have in a heartbeat, but was never asked.” Further clarifying: “That was an opening monologue joke.Never auditioned.”
Weirdly, however, Lorne Michaels still maintains that Carell did, in fact, audition. He once stated: “Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell auditioned. There were lots of people who you’d see how brilliant they were, but you knew on some level that it wasn’t going to work.” So, it would seem the truth might have been bent by time, but I’m sure the story as it has been told online would be one that Carell would certainly recall.
