The 1981 ‘Saturday Night Live’ star who only lasted one episode: “It was a whirlwind five days”
For countless comedians, making it to Saturday Night Live is the ultimate goal. However, getting there and staying there are two completely different things, as one short-lived recruit found out.
Not every veteran of the enduring sketch series either grew up or cast envious eyes at SNL as the place they needed to be, with Bill Hader one of the most prominent, but having been around for so long, a hefty percentage of the revolving repertory have had their eyes on that prize for years, if not decades.
Even if someone hasn’t been raised on a steady diet of Lorne Michaels-produced comedy, they’ll be well aware that over its 50 years on the airwaves, the show has become one of the most prolific and proven pipelines for its brightest shining stars to make the leap to Hollywood and find even more success.
Back in the early 1980s, Laurie Metcalf was at the beginning of her comedic journey, with a solitary uncredited feature film appearance in 1978’s A Wedding and a handful of stage roles to her name. It should have been a massive opportunity, but it came at the worst possible time.
With Lorne Michaels having left as executive producer, Jean Doumanian was brought in as his replacement, only for the president of NBC to fire him before the end of the season and replace him with Dick Ebersol, who thought that an injection of fresh blood could potentially turn the tide, only for a writers’ strike to curtail the season after its 13th episode, which happened to be Metcalf’s debut.
“It seems like a dream, because it was so long ago, and it was a whirlwind five days I spent in New York,” the actor recalled. “I think it was my first trip to New York ever. I didn’t know anybody, and I was put up in a hotel. They put me in a business suit and sent me out on the street with a little mini camera crew. I was so out of my element; I had no idea what I was doing.”
Metcalf’s sole contribution to SNL was a pre-taped Weekend Update segment, and having been hired as a featured player, when the shortened sixth season wrapped its run ahead of schedule and didn’t renew her contract for the seventh, she became the shortest-tenured cast member in the show’s history to appear on air, a record that still stands 45 years later.
It didn’t go as expected, to put it lightly, but she didn’t let it slow her down. Metcalf would go on to become a fixture of film and television for the next four and a half decades, with nominations from the Academy Awards and Baftas to her name, along with four Primetime Emmy wins and a trio of Golden Globe nods, and she even found a place in the small-screen record books for good measure.
Saturday Night Live was her first-ever job on TV, and after being unceremoniously kicked to the kerb after one episode, it would have been easy for Metcalf to let it go to her head. She’s made of tougher stuff than that, though, and she rebounded in a major way.
