Top 10 Famous Saturday Night Live Audition Stories
#10: To Prop or Not to Prop Bill Hader
Top 10 Funniest Bill Hader SNL Characters
Auditioning for "Saturday Night Live" can be a nerve-wracking experience. Should you go with what you know, and do the stand up set you've perfected for years, or try out something fresh and new for Lorne Michaels and Co.? These thoughts were running through the mind of Bill Hader, as he recalled stepping into a 30 Rock elevator and seeing another comedian holding a bunch of props. That comedian, oddly enough, was future SNL cast member Andy Samberg, who was auditioning the same day. The encounter probably led both to second-guess the whole prop thing . . . but now we know that both Hader and Samburg ended up just fine.
#9: Is New York Ok? Seth Meyers
Top 20 Best Saturday Night Live Hosts
So, the show is "live from New York," meaning that working in the city that never sleeps should be sort of a given, right? Well, for some reason Lorne Michaels still went ahead and asked Seth Meyers whether or not he'd be able to live in NYC, should he be given a spot on the cast. Meyers was doing a final meeting with Michaels before being offered the job, and he told the New York Times that he couldn't help but wonder if “anyone [blew] it at this stage." It’s not like the iconic sketch comedy show could be held anywhere else - especially not for the convenience of a new cast member.
#8: Contractual Obligations Mindy Kaling
"The Office" has seen its share of alumni try their hands at joining the cast of "Saturday Night Live." Steve Carell once auditioned alongside his wife Nancy Walls. They passed on Carell, but offered Walls a spot during the show's 21st season. Mindy Kaling also auditioned for SNL during the second season of "The Office," making a deal with showrunner Greg Daniels that she could be let out of her contract if approved as a cast member. She was offered a writing position on the show, but that wasn't part of the deal, so she stayed on "The Office," despite knowing the potential for parlaying that position into an eventual slot on the main cast. Ah, what might have been.
#7: Time Crunch Kristen Wiig
Top 10 Funniest TV Shows Of All Time
We mentioned earlier about how stressful choosing material for an SNL audition can be, and this also applies to making sure everything is timed correctly, sometimes down to the millisecond. Kristen Wiig had this nailed down for her turn at bat for the SNL cast, after being told that all auditions had to be five minutes, maximum. Wiig told the New York Times that she even bought a stopwatch, in order to make sure her material could fit in the allotted time. Then, when she actually was in the 30 Rock building, she heard that other performers were doing sets in excess of ten minutes - which really let the wind out of her sails.
#6: The Right Obama? Donald Glover
Top 10 Saturday Night Live Fake Ads
Ok, so how did this not become a thing? Donald Glover wasn't auditioning to become a member of the "Saturday Night Live" cast, its featured players, or even on the writing team, but threw his hat in the ring to play former President Barack Obama during the show's 2007-2008 season. Glover was already writing and performing on the "30 Rock" TV show alongside Tina Fey, and had proven his strength at comedy, and we think he could've done a very Presidential job with his impressions. The role was eventually given to cast member Fred Armisen, however, leaving us all to imagine this scenario in our heads until the end of time.
#5: Lorne Laughing on the Inside Jimmy Fallon
Lorne Michaels is the ultimate deciding factor when it comes to landing a job with SNL, and meetings with him can go a myriad of different ways. Jimmy Fallon was waiting three hours for his meeting, when he was informed by an assistant that Chris Farley was kept waiting over eight. Then, there was when Fallon was told by no less than three people not to be dissuaded if Lorne didn't laugh during his audition. His reaction? "He’s doing a comedy show. Why does he not like to laugh?" It ended with Jimmy doing an Adam Sandler impression for Lorne, which he must have found funny whether he showed it or not!
#4: No Women This Year Rachel Dratch
Top 20 Saturday Night Live Sketches That Broke the Whole Cast
There's always been an ebb and flow to the cast of "Saturday Night Live," with performers of different genders, races and sexual orientations passing through over the years. As a result, sometimes casting directors are looking for different things, depending upon what kind of holes they need filled within the featured players. Rachel Dratch didn't get in the door during her first audition for the show, with SNL hiring Jimmy Fallon, Horatio Sanz and Chris Parnell in her place. She was told that the show "wasn't hiring women" that year, which is a funny thing to hear, but Dratch told the New York Times that she eventually felt "at peace" with the decision.
#3: Don't Do Mary Katherine Molly Shannon
Top 20 Worst Saturday Night Live Cast Members
Hey, sometimes you just shouldn't listen to anyone other than yourself. Molly Shannon certainly followed her instincts when she auditioned for SNL, and was told that Lorne Michaels would "hate" her character of Mary Katherine Gallagher. Sure, it would've been easy for Shannon to listen to this bad advice from one of the show's talent scouts, but she listened to her gut, and eventually created an iconic character for the ages. The lesson here? Go with what you know, even if what you know is doing an awkward, accident prone armpit-smelling Catholic school girl obsessed with Meredith Baxter-Birney.
#2: Awkward Callback Will Ferrell
Top 10 Awkward Moments in Live TV
Will Ferrell was back in New York for his second meeting with Lorne Michaels, so he sat down and started to go through his act. Michaels told him that he basically needed to come up with something entirely new. Ferrell had actually planned an elaborate joke for the meeting, bringing along a briefcase full of fake money to offer as a bribe. But the atmosphere was tense, and he changed his mind at the last minute. The next day, he ended up doing a sketch about a businessman who rolls around on the floor playing with cat toys . . . which he was sure bombed. Fortunately, he was wrong - or we would never have gotten more cowbell.
#1: Persistence Pays Off Eddie Murphy
Eddie Murphy wasn't even twenty years old when he felt the urge to inundate an SNL talent coordinator with daily phone calls for a week, begging for a chance to get on the show. That coordinator eventually relented, intending to use Murphy as a non-speaking extra in the background. Eddie, perhaps predictably, killed at the audition, and he was made a full member of the SNL cast. Murphy served as one of the shining stars and saving graces for the show's tumultuous sixth season, known as "SNL '80," and went on to not only become a series staple, but an absolute comedy icon.
