Red carpet arrivals, expected celebrity guests, former cast and more
One of the more remarkable aspects of the first episode of the “SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night” docuseries on Peacock is how embarrassed some of the show’s brightest stars are watching video of their first auditions.
Multiple former “SNL” cast members were amazed at the relatively low quality of their first auditions for the show as seen on the episode, titled “Five Minutes.” It was named for the time prospective cast members were given to wow executives.
Former cast member Pete Davidson (2014-22), who auditioned in 2014, set the scene in an appearance on “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”
“There’s no one in there,” he said. “You’re on the stage, the ‘SNL’ stage, and [creator] Lorne [Michaels] is there, [Executive Producer Steve] Higgins and maybe one or two other people, but they’re blacked out. You can’t see them. So you’re doing your whole act to no one. And once in a while, you’ll hear like, ‘Heh!'”
Molly Shannon (1995-2001) corroborated that memory with her own.
“The audience was not laughing,” she said. “It was like crickets.”
Tracy Morgan (1996-2003), watching video of his 1996 audition, which included an impression of a friend he called Biscuit, said: “This is crazy. This is crazy.”
He continued, “I don’t know what Lorne Michaels and them saw. They saw something.”
David Spade (1990-96), recalling his frame of mind during his start on the show, said he was “never thinking I’d be good enough to be on ‘SNL.'”
Bobby Moynihan (2008-17) watched as he did an impression of a friend for his audition, which helped him get a job on the show starting in 2008. “Oh, no,” he said ominously.
Davidson watched his audition and said, “How the [expletive] did I get this show?”
