Saturday Night Live cast member Bowen Yang sparked a ton of speculation on Sunday when he revealed that an SNL host from the past five seasons was “terrible” to the cast and crew.
“This man who—this person, this host—made multiple cast members cry on Wednesday before the table read because he hated the ideas,” Yang said, declining to name names.
Although the identity of this host remains a mystery, it’s a stark reminder that bad hosts are nothing new on this show. While most hosts tend to be on their best behavior, every once in a while there’s that rude, selfish, or just plain awkward host who drags the whole crew down with them.
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Here are some of the most infamous examples throughout the show’s 50 year history, from the obvious disasters to the surprising flops:
Donald Trump
Although Trump had hosted once in 2004 without too much trouble, his gig on SNL amidst his 2016 presidential campaign had a whole different, uncomfortable feel to it. Not only did critics bash it, but the cast members were miserable too.
“It wasn’t the most fun week ever,” Pete Davidson told Variety in 2018. “He doesn’t get jokes. He doesn’t get tone. He doesn’t get punchlines. He’ll say words differently. He’s just a dweeb.”
Taran Killam, who left the show after that season, described feeling “shame and embarrassment” about Trump’s episode. And Jay Pharoah called it a “weird episode,” remarking that “at the end, everyone was standing in the back. Nobody would stand next to him. He doesn’t even notice it!”
Justin Bieber
The young pop star famously struggled to stop his sudden burst of international fame from getting to his head, and the 2013 SNL cast had to bear the brunt of this.
When Jay Pharoah and Bill Hader were asked who the “worst behaved” SNL host was, they both immediately answered Bieber. Hader explained, “He was in a bad place. Maybe he’s in a better place, but then, it was rough.”
Hader elaborated a few years later, saying, “I really didn’t enjoy having Justin Bieber around… He’s the only one who lived up to the reputation. I think that’s the only time I felt that way in eight years.”
Bieber’s backstage behavior was so bad, in fact, that it helped inspire the entire premise of a fictional show from two ex-SNL writers who were there at the time.
Elon Musk
Not only were Chris Redd and Bowen Yang making fun of Musk on social media before his May 2021 episode, but there were constant reports leading up to it that multiple cast members were distancing themselves from the controversial billionaire. The fact that the episode itself was unusually awkward only added to the sense that there was a lot of tension behind the scenes.
SNL even threw in a joke at his expense in the season 46 finale a few weeks later. That episode’s cold open had Cecily Strong sarcastically saying, “Let’s take a look at some of the highlights of this season,” before playing a very short montage of just Musk in his infamous Wario sketch. “Wait, was that it?”
Andrew Dice Clay
Hosting in May 1990, Dice Clay was the first SNL host to provoke an actual walkout. Not only was his episode widely criticized for its mean-spirited, misogynist humor, but cast member Nora Dunn flat-out refused to appear on the show that week.
“His material was terrible,” Dunn would later say about the comic. “He just wasn’t smart enough to handle that material. And our writing staff was not the writing staff to handle that material either. Lorne said, ‘Andrew Dice Clay was a phenomenon worth examining.’ And yeah, he was a phenomenon, but if you’re going to examine him, he shouldn’t be the host, you should write an article.”
Steven Seagal
It takes a special type of terrible for Lorne Michaels, the always-diplomatic showrunner of SNL, to openly joke that you were “the biggest jerk who’s ever been on the show.” Seagal’s episode painfully unfunny, including the unbearable “Jennifer’s Date” sketch that was met with total audience silence, but he also alienated the whole cast in the days leading up to it.
“He just wasn’t funny and he was very critical of the cast and the writing staff,” cast member Tim Meadows once explained. “He didn’t realize that you can’t tell somebody they’re stupid on Wednesday and expect them to continue writing for you on Saturday.”
“He’s just the most awful person… He’s a f---ing moron.” said Al Franken in a 2022 interview. The former SNL writer explained how Seagal’s big sketch idea (which was never made) featured himself playing a psychiatrist who rapes Victoria Jackson’s character multiple times, with the punchline being that he’ll do it again next week. Franken recalled telling him, “So, you want us to do the ugliest sketch that’s ever been on television?”
Chevy Chase
Famous for being a jerk long after he left SNL (just ask the Community cast), the original cast member was particularly difficult to work with when he came back to host numerous time. He reportedly ranted to new “Weekend Update” anchor Jane Curtin about how women weren’t funny, and later pitched a sketch to Terry Sweeney (the show’s first openly gay cast member) in which Sweeney would “have AIDS and get weighed every week.”
Sweeney recalled Chase apologizing for it afterward: “He was really furious that he had to apologize to me. He was just beside himself. And it was just awful. He acted horribly to me. He acted horribly to everyone.”
As covered in the 2002 book, Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, cast member Jon Lovitz also recalled Chase’s poor treatment of Sweeney: “So, Chevy looks at Terry Sweeney and goes, ‘You’re gay, right?’ Terry goes, ‘Yes, what would you like me to do for you?’ Chevy goes, ‘Well, you can start by licking my balls.’”
And yet, Chase continued to be invited back to host again and again, including, most recently, in 1997. As Will Ferrell explained of that episode, “I don’t know if he was on something, but he was just kind of going around the room and systematically riffing. First it was on the guys, playfully making fun, until, when he got to one of our female writers, he made some reference like, ‘Maybe you can give me a handjob later.’ In hindsight, I wish we’d all gotten up and walked out of the room.”
Milton Berle
As a comedian who hit his career peak in the forties and fifties, Berle proved an awkward fit when he hosted SNL in 1979. As one staff writer explained in Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live, Berle came onto the set with “the attitude, ‘I am TV.’ Not ‘I used to be TV,’ but ‘I am TV.’”
Most of the writers and cast members reportedly found him condescending — he kept pitching ideas by starting off with, “Now this might be over your heads” — and his habit of “mugging the camera” infuriated them. He also reportedly exposed himself to a few of the writers, and set up a fake standing ovation during the show that weirded Lorne Michaels out.
Michaels explained in a 2014 interview, “He wanted to close the show with ‘September Song,’ him and a piano… He said, ‘Don’t worry, the standing ovation is all set.’ The host has 10 seats, and suddenly he starts singing and 10 people in the balcony stand up. No one else is standing up. It was just bizarre.”
Kanye West
West was never a host, but he was a musical guest so many times that he still deserves a shout-out here. Although his first five times on the show were relatively drama-free, things went off the rails in 2018 when he went on an unhinged pro-Trump rant during the closing credits.
“What Kanye said after he went off the air last week was one of the worst, most awkward things I’ve ever seen here,” Pete Davidson said. “And I’ve seen Chevy Chase speak to an intern. And we all had to stand behind him.”
Making things worse was West’s later (mostly one-sided) feud with Davidson, in which West repeatedly threatened and insulted him for months on end. Things got so heated that SNL reportedly banned the rapper from the show entirely.
