Every actor banned from appearing on ‘Saturday Night Live’
The iconic late-night sketch show Saturday Night Live has had more than its fair share of controversy. The show flirts with gaining headlines in the Sunday newspapers for its outlandish sketches as regularly as it invites contentious guest stars to grace the stage at Studio 8H.
Over the years, the show has operated on the knife-edge of decency and has usually come out unscathed. However, across the decades, thanks in part to Lorne Michaels’ strict reign over the show and the massive sponsorship the near-50-year-old institution garners, some stars have found themselves banned from ever appearing on the show indefinitely.
Having triumphed some of the greatest comedians, SNL has had a long tradition of welcoming a wide range of eclectic musical artists, actors and television personalities to arguably the most high-profile stage in television. Looking through the list of names banned from the show, the most notorious rulebreakers are musicians.
Bands such as punks Fear, anti-establishment rockers Rage Against The Machine, and rap trio Cypress Hill, have all found themselves on the show’s ‘no-fly’ list. Elsewhere, Sinéad O’Connor and Elvis Costello have also been banned during their years, the former for tearing up a picture of the Pope and the latter for singing a song that wasn’t on the pre-determined setlist.
But, without a doubt, the next most frequent offenders all have their professional history rooted in acting. Below, we have the complete list of actors banned from Saturday Night Live.
Every actor banned from Saturday Night Live:
Andy Kauffman
It’s best to start off with a contentious entry early, and Andy Kauffman is always contentious. While the show’s producers ban the rest of the entries on our list, Kauffman is the only actor to have been given the chop by the audience at home.
Kauffman had been a long-standing feature artist for the show and had been a part of as many as nine different episodes in his career since the show began in 1975. However, in 1983, the show held a poll to determine whether or not Kauffman was allowed to make more appearances on the show.
The votes came in, and Kauffman lost out. The vote, split between “Dump Andy” and “Keep Andy”, saw a mammoth amount of entries, and the ballots split 195,544 to 169.186, respectively. Saturday Night Live, never a series to avoid public demand, bowed to the votes, and Kauffman never returned to the show.
Adrien Brody
Adrien Brody may well be an Oscar-winning actor, but the actor’s first attempt at presenting fell awkwardly flat. The actor was booked to host Saturday Night Live in 2003 and would make the mistake of taking to the stage in an improvised skit, which was later criticised as racially offensive.
Brody went off-script and walked on stage to welcome the next guest, Sean Paul, wearing faux dreadlocks and using an awful Jamaican accent: “Ya, ya, ya, ya, you know, man. We got original rude boy Sean Paul here,” Brody begins to say as the crowd falls silent.
He continues: “Respect all respect. My auntie. Respect all aspects, respect me neck, respect me knees, Big up Jamaica massive! Big up Kingston Massive! We got the whole family now, ya here! Big respect to my man Sean Paul the dance floor killer!”
Martin Lawrence
In the 1990s, Martin Lawrence was one of the hottest actors around. The comedian had found fame as one of America’s most brutal performers and failed to tone down his act when hosting SNL in 1994. He started his monologue with a reference to Lorena Bobbit, who had been in the news for cutting off her husband’s penis before launching into an uncomfortable tirade about female hygiene.
The full transcript can be found online, including lines such as: “Um… some of you are not washing your ass properly,” which is how he begins the monologue. Going further, Lawrence adds: “I’m watching douche commercials on television, and I’m wondering if some of you are reading the instructions. I don’t think so. Y’know, ’cause I’m getting with some of the ladies, smelling odours, going ‘Wait a minute’. Girl, smell this! This you! Smell yourself, girl.”
Clearly not getting the reaction he desires, he adds: “Smell yourself! I tell a woman in a minute, douche! Douche! Some women don’t like it when you tell them that, when you straightforward with them. ‘Douche!”
It doesn’t get much better from there as the crowd pulls back from the conversation Lawrence is now having with himself, “I’m sorry, y’all. You got to wash properly. You know, and then, you know, ’cause I’m a man, I like to kiss on women, you know, I like to kiss all over their bodies, you know. But if you’re not clean in your proper areas, I can’t.”
The footage has been completely removed from existence but resulted in over 200 complaints and, according to some reports, caused protests from several SNL sponsors and resulted in Martin Lawrence being permanently banned from the show.
Louise Lasser
Despite working as an actor in some of her husband Woody Allen’s first feature films, Louise Lasser never truly conquered her stage fright. With millions watching Saturday Night Live at home, the impending pressure of performing live left Lasser unable to complete almost any of her duties as host.
Lasser never really got around to standing in front of the camera after she locked herself in her dressing room before the show could begin. The rest of the cast was forced to pick up the scenes and roles they had planned for Lasser until she finally agreed to come out and perform.
Even when she did finally rouse enough courage to come in front of the audience in the studio, Lasser only completed one sketch with a cast member, Chevy Chase. It’s a painful viewing and is perhaps the reason Lasser is often regarded as the first person to be banned from the show.
Robert Blake
Perhaps to be expected from such a figure, but the late star of In Cold Blood, Robert Blake, would take his role as host very seriously. Arriving in 1982, ready to command his role as host, Blake set about abusing almost all of the cast members.
“My vote for worst host is Robert Blake,” remembered writer David Sheffield. “He was sitting in a room and a sketch was handed to him by Gary Kroeger, who was a writer-actor – a sketch called ‘Breezy Philosopher,’ a one-premise sketch about a lofty teacher who’s kind of a biker tough guy, talking about Kierkegaard. Students kept asking questions while he combed his hair, and he’d say, ‘Hey, I don’t know.’”
“Blake sat there and read that,” continued Sheffield, “With his glasses down his nose, then wadded it up, turned to Kroeger, and said, ‘I hope you got a tough asshole, pal, ‘cause you’re going to have to wipe your ass with that one.’ And he threw it and bounced it off Gary’s face.”
Blake was never invited back to the show.
Steven Seagal
While musicians tend to be banned from the show for using swear words or generally acting out when giving their time to shine, many of the actors on this list go the opposite route. Under the spotlight, they try to be the charismatic personas their publicists hope they can be, but it’s backstage that the bad attitude comes out to play. It was a combination that usually meant that the sketches were not likely to hit the heights needed, and Michaels, the producer extraordinaire, was going to come down hard on the performers.
That’s precisely what happened to martial artist turned action-movie star Steven Seagal in 1991 when he appeared as a guest host on the show. Not necessarily known for his affable nature, Seagal struggled to make sketches work with a rather wooden persona. “He just wasn’t funny and he was very critical of the cast and the writing staff,” former cast member Tim Meadows later recalled. “He didn’t realise that you can’t tell somebody they’re stupid on Wednesday and expect them to continue writing for you on Saturday.”
Looking back, we’re not sure we can think of anybody worse to host a show than Seagal.
Milton Berle
When Milton Berle arrived on the Saturday Night Live set in 1979, he wasn’t beyond letting everybody within earshot know just how much of a big deal he was. In fact, he went as far as to even pitch jokes and skits to the acclaimed comedy show with the preface of “Now this might be over your heads”.
Talking down to professional comedians is never likely to end well, and his provocations were enough to have the cast turn on Berle, but they were still professionals and keen to see the project out.
However, when Berle got on stage, things got worse as he repeatedly lost the cameras, plugged his own autobiography and ensured that a member of his team led a standing ovation for the star. Berle was never invited back to SNL.
Charles Grodin
While it is up for debate whether Charles Grodin was officially “banned” from Saturday Night Live or simply never given a keycard to enter its studio again, one thing is for sure: he did not assimilate himself within the cast. Performing with such an impressive cast as the show had in 1977 meant you had to come with an A-game, something Gordin could barely be bothered to do.
The star of Rosemary’s Baby, Grodin regularly skipped rehearsals for the show and even tried to ad-lib lines after arriving late—both huge mistakes in the world of Saturday Night Live. But his biggest mistake came when he didn’t dive into the debauchery offered in the halls of the show.
John Belushi famously said the biggest problem with Grodin was that “he doesn’t smoke dope,” confirming, “He’s not one of us.”
