Another Top 10 Worst Saturday Night Live Hosts

UFC Hall of Famer Ronda Rousey fought tooth and nail for laughs during her hosting stint in January 2016, but unfortunately, she isn’t as fast in front of a camera as she is in the ring. To be honest, “hosting” might not even be the right word for it. While she didn’t make an ass of herself, she barely appeared in the live sketches, and when she did, her acting was wooden and she didn’t really add anything. We can clearly see you looking at the cue cards, Ronda! Throw in a bland performance by Selena Gomez, and you had one of the worst episodes of season 41.

The infamous Charles Grodin episode is a thing of “Saturday Night Live” legend. Grodin took up hosting duties in October 1977, but awkwardly stumbled through his lines, improvised large swaths of content, and derailed sketches due to being blissfully unprepared for the show. Some say he missed rehearsals and bungled the night, and some say it was an Andy Kaufman-esque bit of meta humor that flew over everyone’s heads. It was a disaster either way, and few people found him funny or enjoyable. Kind of like Andy Kaufman himself a lot of the time.

By the time MC Hammer hosted SNL on December 7, 1991, he was already dancing his way out of the zeitgeist. “U Can’t Touch This” was well behind him, and while “2 Legit 2 Quit” proved relatively successful, it wasn’t the Earth-shattering single that the former was. As a result, this episode reeked of a celebrity desperately trying to hold on to relevancy, especially when you consider that he was the musical guest as well. Unfortunately, he proved a bad host due to some wooden acting and making the odd decision to refer to himself in the third person. While he may be 2 legit 2 quit, he wasn’t 2 legit 2 fail.

Who in the right mind thought that a civic rights activist and Baptist minister would make for a good “Saturday Night Live” host? Sharpton hosted the show while running for President on December 6, 2003, but just because someone is a Presidential candidate doesn’t mean they’re good at comedy. Politicians and Baptist ministers do not often make for good actors. As everyone predicted, it was generally a disaster, as Sharpton often looked bored and uncomfortable, and it came across as little more than a transparent campaign ad. His recent misspelling of “respect” was funnier than anything he did on “Saturday Night Live.”

Wayne Gretzky’s stint on “Saturday Night Live” was oddly reassuring. It reinforced the idea that everyone has flaws, and that even the all-time greats are human. Gretzky is often considered to be the greatest hockey player to ever lace up skates, yet he is certainly not an actor. And that’s putting it mildly. We suppose seeing him play hockey with Wayne and Garth was cool, but that’s the extent of this episode’s quality, which saw the sports legend noticeably glancing off-camera and delivering his lines and jokes with the enthusiasm of a brick wall. The episode is great as a time capsule, but certainly not as a funny hour of television.

If there’s one celebrity primed to host “Saturday Night Live,” it’s the gut-busting, rip-roaring Casey Affleck. In case you can’t tell, we’re being sarcastic. To promote that hilarious movie “Manchester by the Sea,” Casey Affleck hosted the show in December 2016, and…well, it was the same old mumbly and deadpan Casey Affleck you’ve come to expect. While his reserved personality may work for dramatic movie roles, it isn’t a boon in sketch comedy. Besides the obvious standout Dunkin’ Donuts segment, Casey seemed completely out of his element and had little chemistry with the cast. Still, we must give him props for his self-deprecating monologue.

Andrew Dice Clay was a prominent stand-up comedian in the late 80s known for crude and sexist humor. To much fanfare, Clay took up the mantle of SNL host in May 1990, just eight months after he was banned from MTV. Both Nora Dunn and Sinead O’Connor refused to appear out of protest, and some viewers sent in hate mail and threats. But their fears were unwarranted, as Clay was painfully sanitized and blandly self-referential, which made for a dull host and also annoyed the comedian’s established fanbase. Like the failed opening of Capone’s vault, this was a national media event that instantly deflated.

Louise Lasser was plastered all over the magazines of the mid-70s due to her role in the satirical soap opera “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.” However, she quickly left the show after exhausting herself and seemingly had a minor breakdown, getting busted for possessing cocaine and crawling around looking for drugs during SNL rehearsals. She was hated by Chevy Chase due to her apparent “solipsism” and constantly tried to back out of her obligations. The show itself was a sloppy and awkward piece of self-deprecating meta humor, and Lorne Michaels refused to have the episode rerun out of embarrassment.

It’s no secret that athletes kind of suck as comedians, and while Wayne Gretzky was awful, he looks like Jim Carrey next to Michael Phelps. Oh boy, that Michael Phelps episode. He may be the fastest human to ever enter water, but he had the grace of a dump truck in front of the camera. Not only did he have no semblance of comedic timing, but he painfully stumbled through his lines and failed to read his cue cards on numerous occasions. The man is clearly not comfortable in live sketch comedy, and it made for an agonizingly awkward hour of television.

Let’s be honest here – that Nancy Kerrigan episode was a blatant ratings ploy, and nothing more. After being attacked by a hired thug linked to rival Tonya Harding, the figure skater was national news, which the producers of “SNL” decided was a good enough reason to have her host. It definitely wasn’t, and Kerrigan was gobsmackingly awful. She was a horrible actress and comedian who lacked both timing and charisma, and she looked supremely uncomfortable the entire time, almost as if she was internally questioning why she was there. We were - and still are - wondering the same thing.