The ‘Saturday Night Live’ audition John Goodman called “the worst thing I’ve ever done”
In 1980, John Goodman, a recent Missouri State University graduate, made his way to New York City to pursue a career as an actor. He found a cheap apartment in Hell’s Kitchen near the theatre district and worked as a bartender and waiter before he began landing Off-Broadway and dinner theatre roles. Around this time, New York comedy institution Saturday Night Live was going through a troubled period. Its creator, Lorne Michaels, left the show in 1980 after five years at the helm, and most of his cast departed with him. His successor, Jean Doumanian, had to scramble together auditions for the upcoming season quickly – and this is where a young Goodman came in.
Now, having the gumption to audition for SNL when he hadn’t yet landed a single movie or television role is a testament to Goodman’s belief in himself. However, trying out for that hallowed show is arguably the pinnacle of live comedy in New York, so you might have assumed he had experience in sketch comedy or even stand-up. Alas, dear reader, you would be wrong – the 28-year-old aspiring thespian had no experience in comedy whatsoever.
When he appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in 2022, Goodman reflected on his audition for SNL. He didn’t sugarcoat anything, either, chuckling to the host, “It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done in front of people in my life.” For some reason, Goodman seemed to think he’d be able to wing the audition, so he admitted, “I wrote something about 15 minutes before I went over there, and oh God, it was awful.” With a wry smile, he lamented, “It’s not that I had any material to show or anything good to do,” before quipping, “I just knew they’d hire me because I’m a nice guy!”
Unsurprisingly, Doumanian wasn’t impressed by Goodman’s half-assed audition, and he didn’t get hired for the show. It would take a few more years for him to begin booking movie and TV roles, but once he made his big-screen debut in 1983’s Eddie Macon’s Run and landed parts in a couple of TV movies that same year, he was off to the races. Happily, by the end of the decade, Goodman had become a bona fide star thanks to his role as Dan Conner in Roseanne, and he was able to return to SNL not as a hopeful cast member but as a celebrity host.
Over the following decades, Goodman would successfully exorcise the demons of his botched audition by becoming one of the most beloved SNL hosts in history. In fact, becoming a member of the Five-Timers Club – unsurprisingly, someone who has hosted five times – is viewed as a big deal at SNL. To illustrate just how good he was at it, though, Goodman has long eclipsed that number by hosting 13 times and making a handful of other special appearances.
“It used to be my favourite thing I’d do every year would be Saturday Night Live,” Goodman told Fallon. “They always made me feel at home, and you’re with a bunch of smart and funny people. It just feels great.”
So, it all turned out OK for Goodman and SNL in the end. As an interesting side note, though, it might have softened the blow of failing his audition for the show in ’80 if Goodman had known future comedy stars like Paul Reubens, Sandra Bernhard, and Jim freakin’ Carrey were also rejected by Doumanian.
Instead, she hired a cast that was largely despised by the audience, with the exception of Joe Piscopo and Eddie Murphy, who, according to some reports, was hired against Doumanian’s wishes. Ultimately, she probably wasn’t too surprised when she was fired after only 10 months of attempting to fill Michaels’ shoes.
