Top 10 Behind the Scenes SNL Scandals

In hindsight, this was an embarrassment for both parties… On September 12, 2019, comedian and podcaster Shane Gillis was announced as a cast member for SNL’s 45th season. However, he was fired four days later when clips revealed that the comedian had used racial and homophobic slurs on his podcast. For clarification, these weren’t remarks from a decade ago - these were from 2018. Gillis tweeted an apology . . . of sorts . . . that same night, but the damage had been done. SNL didn’t escape unscathed either, receiving criticism for not having done enough background research into their new hire.

In 1998, Norm Macdonald and fellow writer Jim Downey were fired from SNL. The reason? Well, according to NBC west coast president Don Ohlmeyer, it was due to a decline in quality. But rumors flew that another factor had prompted Macdonald’s removal. Ohlmeyer was good friends O. J. Simpson, who had just been aquitted on two counts of murder. And Macdonald had been making a LOT of O. J. Simpson jokes. Macdonald has since changed his mind about Ohlmeyer’s motives, and believes that the show just stopped seeing him as funny. But at the time, it was quite the scandal.

When you hire a rebellious, politically-minded rock band like Rage Against the Machine, maybe DON’T ask a CEO to host your show. Yet that’s precisely what SNL did when Steve Forbes hosted in April 1996. During their performance, the band had an American flag hung upside-down from one of the amps in protest while they sung “Bulls on Parade”. Apparently, this was done without show creator and producer Lorne Michaels knowing about it, and as we’ll see later on, the SNL head honcho does NOT like it when guests go off-script. Michaels chased the band out of the studio immediately after their performance, and since then, Rage Against the Machine has been banned from the SNL stage.

When Damon Wayans joined the SNL cast in 1985, he was widely seen as a replacement for Eddie Murphy, who had left the previous year. Now those are some BIG shoes to fill. Unfortunately, Wayans and Lorne Michaels had very different ideas about Wayans’ role in the cast. Wayans wanted more creative freedom, while Michaels wanted to bring him up slow to “protect” him from the Eddie Murphy comparison. That wasn’t good enough for Wayans, who changed his character during a live taping - resulting in him getting fired. Wayans has since said that that’s just what he wanted. He’d later find more success on the sketch comedy series “In Living Color”.

Both Lorne Michaels and SNL alumni have been pretty vocal about what a terrible host Steven Seagal was. It wasn’t because of his performance . . . or at least, not ONLY that . . . but rather his inability to work with the cast. In the book “Live from New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live”, several SNL alumni spoke about Seagal’s difficult behavior. These include incidents where he pitched completely tasteless skits - including one where he’d play a therapist trying to have sex with Victoria Jackson, instead of counselling her for sexual assault. The actor has been permanently banned from the show.

John Belushi is one of the most revered SNL cast members of the late 70s. But according to Jane Curtin, he also unapologetically sexist behind-the-scenes. During her appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show”, she said that Belushi was one of several men who tried to sabotage the work of female writers. Curtin claimed that Belushi said that “women are just fundamentally not funny”, and that “if a woman writer had written a piece” for him, he’d half-ass it, “not [reading] it in his full voice”. Never meet your heroes, kids.

Remember when we mentioned that Lorne Michaels doesn’t like last-minute changes? Well, that was especially evident when Elvis Costello performed for SNL in 1977. Filling in for the Sex Pistols, Costello was brought on to perform his newest hit “Less Than Zero”. The only problem was that Costello felt the song was irrelevant to American audiences, as it was conceived as an attack against English politician Oswald Mosley. And so, a few bars into the song, Costello halted the performance, vaguely apologized to the audience, and transitioned into “Radio Radio”. The English rockstar would be banned from SNL for over a decade.

Given his penchant for tantrums and tirades, it should be no surprise to see Kanye on this list. In 2018, Kanye made headlines with a political rant during SNL’s credits about Trump, the “liberal media”, and his own presidential aspirations. But that wasn’t his first meltdown on the show. In February 2016, he almost walked out moments before his performance . . . because he didn’t like the set. The notoriously egotistical rapper’s meltdown got so bad that it took both Lorne Michaels and Kim Kardashian to calm him down. A short time later, audio clips of Kanye’s tantrum surfaced, and needless to say, it was truly cringe-worthy.

Andrew Dice Clay was one of the most famous, and infamous, comedians of the 80s. His “Diceman” persona and shock humor both sold out venues, and incensed critics, who slammed his act as sexist, homophobic, and racist. When the comedian was scheduled to host Saturday Night Live on May 12, 1990, SNL’s Nora Dunn decided to boycott the show. Musical guest Sinead O’Connor followed suit. The show went on as scheduled, with beefed up security measures, but not without an angry audience, some of whom had to be forcibly removed.

Funny on-screen doesn’t mean fun behind-the-scenes. When he returned for stints on SNL, Chevy Chase was reportedly a nightmare for those who’d succeeded him. He managed to insult Robert Downey Jr., ended up in a fist fight with Bill Murray, and suggested a sketch to gay castmember Terry Sweeney about him losing weight due to AIDS. Will Ferrell described Chase as “a little snobbish”, with a habit of screaming at people. The last straw finally came in 1997, when he slapped Cheri Oteri in the back of the head, and was banned from hosting duties. He’s made a few guest appearances since, but those days are probably over; in 2018 he slammed the show as the “worst . . . humor in the world”.