The role Dan Aykroyd begged to be fired from: “I can’t do this”
When it comes to comedians at the movies, few have done better than the esteemed Dan Aykroyd.
From Ghostbusters and The Blues Brothers to the time he randomly turned up in Indiana Jones, the funnyman has had a long and fascinating career that has delivered far more than laughs; he was also in Pearl Harbour, but there’s no need to rub that in his face.
It’s not just the big screen on which the Canadian has excelled, seeing as The Blues Brothers was born when both Aykroyd and John Belushi were cast members on Saturday Night Live, with both men being part of the legendary show’s initial cast. He’s also appeared on the likes of Family Guy, The Simpsons, Tales from the Crypt, and many more, but one project that even the most diehard Ayk-heads struggle to remember is Soul Man.
This was a half-hour sitcom that ran for two seasons on ABC between 1997 and 1998, and while this format has been a star-making vehicle for so many great performers and has helped to secure the legacies of many others, Dan simply couldn’t hack it.
“I got to the point where I thought, ‘I don’t want to know what I’m doing on Monday morning’,” he told AV Club, “I thought, ‘I can’t do this. I can’t know that I’m going to be working on Monday morning, and then all week and then for months. No, I need my freedom!’ So I asked to be let go, and they did. It was a hit, that show. But I was doing other things and wanted to explore other things, and I couldn’t be tied down to a sitcom. So graciously, they let me out.”
The premise of the show was that Aykroyd’s character, Reverend Mike Weber, is struggling to maintain his career while raising his four children following the death of his wife. The actors playing the Weber children included Brendon Ryan Barrett, who went on to appear in Two of a Kind and King of Queens, and Spencer Breslin, who would later star in major movies like The Kid and the fever dream that was The Cat in the Hat, while his sister Abigail Breslin would become known for Little Miss Sunshine.
Aykroyd made it very clear that having to work alongside children wasn’t the reason he quit the show, claiming, “The kids were great, but it just wasn’t for me”. Instead, it was the strain of regular filming that really got him in his head. After leaving SNL, he never signed on to do more than a handful of episodes of any show, the only exception being Psi Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal, a science fiction drama he co-created with his brother Peter. Aykroyd played the show’s host, which was criticised by some for promoting paranormal conspiracy theories without any substantial evidence, but anyone who knows about his penchant for the unexplained will realise that this was right up his street.
As fun as it would have been to have received a daily dose of Aykroyd on TV every week, he clearly wasn’t meant to be a regular kind of guy. When you’re as wild and free-spirited as he is, the idea of essentially having a nine-to-five is enough to make your skin crawl; at least he wasn’t mean to the kids.
