11 Actors And Comedians Who Shockingly Turned Down “SNL” (And Their Surprising Reasons Why)

SNL cast Shane Gillis in 2019, but he was fired before the season started after racist remarks he’d made on his podcast resurfaced. SNL brought Shane back in February of this year to host an episode, and it included a sketch where he impersonated former president and current president-elect Donald Trump.

According to Deadline, Shane claimed at a comedy festival in October that he was asked to portray Trump this season. However, the publication reported he said at the festival that he turned down the gig. The role went to SNL cast member James Austin Johnson.

Mindy Kaling told The Daily Beast in 2019 that she tried out for Saturday Night Live while starring in the second season of The Office, having received approval from The Office showrunner Greg Daniels to audition. However, Lorne Michaels offered her a role as a writer on SNL, not a performer on the series. 

“But there was some hint at that point that if I stayed on long enough, like Jason Sudeikis, that I could maybe graduate to be a performer. That was dangled to me, so I thought, well that’s pretty exciting,” Kaling told the publication. “So I went back and talked to Greg about it and he said to me, no, that’s not the deal we made. The deal we made is that if you get cast as a cast member you can go. And it was really a life-changing thing. I think the course of my career would have gone really differently had I left The Office and done that instead.”

Before she became a household name as Rachel Green in Friends, Jennifer Aniston considered but declined an offer to join the Saturday Night Live cast. 

She said on The Howard Stern Show in 2019 that she didn’t think she’d “like that environment” and even spoke to Lorne Michaels at the time about the show’s treatment of women.

“I think that women need to be treated better here,” she recalled telling him, per People. “Because it was such a boys’ club. You know, you’re just not the brightest when you’re in your early twenties. I didn’t lecture, I was just saying what I would hope, if I was to do this, what I would hope it to be.”

She has since hosted the show twice, once in 1999 and again in 2004.

Don’t expect to see Captain America hosting SNL anytime soon. The actor told ET Canada in 2023 that he’s “avoided” hosting the show.

“I’ve avoided hosting SNL like the plague for years now just because I’m so scared. It’s terrifying to me,” he told the publication, per IndieWire. “To me, it would just be one of those things that every single night I would wake up in a cold sweat.”

But don’t rule out any appearance. “A cameo sounds great, that’s perfect. In and out…get your toes wet,” he said.

In April, Patrick Mahomes revealed to Time that he doesn’t feel ready to host the late-night sketch show following an unsavory experience reading from a teleprompter at the ESPYs years ago. 

“I have a little bit of a fear with the teleprompter,” he told the publication.

In 2017, Julia Roberts told Extra that she’s always been “intimated” by the show. She grew up watching it in the late 1970s and early 1980s when skits featuring Land Shark and Pre-Chew Charlie’s were popular.

“It always really intimidated me how funny and clever that show is,” she told Extra. “So when I was asked to do it long, long ago, I always said, ‘No,’ because I was too afraid. Too afraid to blow it.” Julia said she hasn’t since received a call from Lorne Michaels asking her to host. “We’ll see if that ever happens,” she added. 

Bonnie Hunt is among the many comedians who got their start at Chicago’s legendary Second City improv school and comedy club where she eventually caught SNL’s eye. However, Bonnie told the LA Times in 2008 that she turned down an offer to join the SNL cast.

“I asked, ‘If there’s an end of a scene that doesn’t feel like it’s working, can you improvise?'” she told the publication, noting that Lorne Michaels said “absolutely not” in response. The publication also noted that Bonnie saw gender disparity on the show. “It didn’t seem like women’s careers were really launched on that show,” she said. 

Orlando Bloom passed up on an opportunity to host SNL around the time his 2007 film Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End came out.

“I was really insecure at the time,” he told Howard Stern in 2019 but noted “in a heartbeat” he’d host if asked again. “I’d love to, yeah,” he said.

Betty White, who died in 2021, hosted SNL in 2010 following a viral Facebook fan petition. However, this came after years of saying “no” to hosting.

“We had asked over the years, because she was one of the foremost comediennes. It just bubbled up,” Lorne Michaels to Vanity Fair in 2022 of the Facebook petition. “The audience wouldn’t know that the timing had always been off, or that she didn’t want to do it at that point, but her absence was really clear.”

Betty became the oldest person to host the show and even won an Emmy for her performance.

According to The Wrap, Mark Ruffalo told comedian Marc Maron on the WTF podcast in February that he said “no” to hosting the show. 

“I’ll never be asked back,” he said. “I don’t think Lorne Michaels likes it when you say no. It just scared the living sh*t out of [me]. I don’t know.”

Marc cited his dyslexia as a reason for his fear of hosting. “I’ll lose where I’m at on the page. When I hear about how that show works, changing things at the last second, and I want to be good at it,” he said. “I’ve been watching that my whole life and like, I don’t want to be the guy, the host who sucks. I owe Lorne Michaels more than that.”