The worst ‘Saturday Night Live’ host Will Ferrell ever worked with: “It was just bad news”
Before he became one of the biggest movie stars of the 2000s, Will Ferrell sharpened his mirth-making skills on 138 episodes of Saturday Night Live between 1995 and 2002.
While plying his trade on Lorne Michaels’ seminal sketch comedy institution, Ferrell created a number of memorable characters, including male cheerleader Craig Buchanan, the hot tub-obsessed swing Roger Clarvin and, of course, Gene Frenkle, the fictional Blue Oyster Cult member who gave Christopher Walken a fever whose only prescription was “more cowbell”.
Even though Ferrell left SNL after seven years to pursue movie stardom in blockbuster comedies like Anchorman, Step Brothers, and Talladega Nights, he still regards his time on the show with great reverence. “I had a wonderful seven seasons on that show, where I made lifelong friends,” he told People magazine. “I knew in that moment it would be the hardest but most fun job I would ever get to do, and I still look back on it that way.”
Naturally, though, as with any long-running job, working on SNL wasn’t without its bumpy moments. For instance, every single week, the stars and writing staff work with a new celebrity host, some of whom are better at the gig and more easygoing than others. However, for Ferrell’s money, there was one man who was so awkward to deal with and so passive-aggressive in his dealings with the cast that he was handily the worst host he ever worked with. Ironically – or not-so-ironically, if you know this person’s history, he was actually a former cast member from the show’s 1975-76 debut season.
“The worst host was Chevy Chase,” Ferrell claimed in Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live. “He was here the first year that we were here, and then he came back the next year, and that was the kicker, the following year.”
During this second hosting gig that Ferrell was present for, he got a sinking feeling from the moment Chase turned up at the Monday pitch session, which is where the writers and cast first begin discussing ideas for the show on Saturday. “You could just tell something was up,” Ferrell recalled. “I don’t know if he was on something or what, if he took too many back pills that day or something, but he was just kind of going around the room and systematically riffing.”
Of course, when this “riffing” is done by Chase, a man whose bad temper and even poorer behaviour have been legendary for years, it has much more edge than when other people joke around. First, Chase “playfully” made fun of the male cast members and writers, but when he turned his attention to a female writer, things went off the rails in a hurry. “He made some reference like, ‘Maybe you can give me a hand job later,'” and a shocked Ferrell claimed he’d never seen Michaels “more embarrassed and red.”
Ferrell later regretted that he and his colleagues didn’t immediately get up and leave the room. Everyone was disgusted by Chase’s attitude, but perhaps because he was once such a big star, they indulged him. He proceeded to be snobby about the humour pitched to him, and took to yelling at people in the hallway like he was angry at them. Then, when the person looked back at him in confusion, he’d grin, “I’m just joking.”
The Blades of Glory star knew it was a joke with a poke, though, and that Chase fully intended to make people uncomfortable. With all that in mind, it’s no wonder Ferrell mused, “It was just bad news” and concluded he was “quote-unquote the roughest host.”
