The Worst Time I Bombed on ‘Saturday Night Live’

Saturday Night Live has comedy’s deepest bench: hall-of-famers, heavy-hitting superstars, and indispensably versatile utility players. But just as in baseball, even the show’s most venerable players sometimes strike out.

On the eve of SNL’s 50th anniversary, Bill Hader, Rachel Dratch, Tracy Morgan, Will Forte, Ana Gasteyer, Leslie Jones, Jon Lovitz, Laraine Newman, Cheri Oteri, Joe Piscopo, and Sarah Sherman share with us their best worst memories from their time on the show: of sketches that began auspiciously, but ultimately may not have been ready for late night.

There was “an indescribable magic,” Newman says, when a sketch killed during dress rehearsal and played to silence on air. “I don’t understand the disconnect,” says Dratch, “because at one point that sketch was funny to a large group of people.”

And yes, it’s hard to not take it a little personally when a sketch bombs. “If you had called friends and family to watch, you felt stupid,” says Alan Zweibel, a legendary writer during the show’s first five seasons. “There were times I would say, ‘Hey, the third sketch is mine,’ and it would bomb. When they called the next day, I’d say, ‘Oh, it wasn’t the third sketch, it was the fifth.’ Mostly you felt embarrassed in front of your peers because you had all worked really hard. There were times I literally apologized to the actors. But the great thing about SNL was that Monday marked a new week and a new show to redeem yourself.”

“We were really invested in the show,” Lovitz says. “Lorne [Michaels] would always say, ‘Peak on air’—meaning you did enough at dress to get it picked for the show, but then on air you just went for everything 100%. You have one time to do that sketch. You can’t go back.”

Will Forte (2002–2010): “Fart Face”

Season 34, Episode 5Host: Josh BrolinStarring: Will Forte, Bill Hader, Josh BrolinA corporate meeting goes off the rails when two colleagues get into a tiff after one keeps calling the other “fart face.”

This was a bummer, because I loved that sketch. It turned out exactly how I wanted it to. We didn’t do anything wrong, but the audience didn’t connect to it one bit.

Jerry and Carl were characters Bill and I had done in different sketches. I don’t think they ever really made people laugh, but I loved writing it with Bill and performing it at rehearsals—though we would come out and it would always just fall a little flat. It was always a mystery to me.

At the table, I don’t think anyone said, “‘Fart Face’ will be the next ‘Cowbell,’” but it seemed to be going well at every part of the process—and then at dress rehearsal, it just completely fell flat. It was disappointing, but there was no gray area. We shook our heads and said, “Well, we gave it the old college try,” and went about the rest of our night.

When dress is over, you wait around for 30 minutes. Then you load into Lorne’s office and you look up on his wall, and he’s got the show order there. “Fart Face” was still up on the board. Lorne had only one note on the sketch; he said, “There’s a boom shadow in ‘Fart Face.’” So we were like, Okay, guess we’re doing this.

It’s not unheard of for a sketch to be drastically bad at dress rehearsal and then somehow explode on air and be a hit, so we’re like, Maybe this is one of those. But it didn’t feel like that. We’re waiting backstage, and right before we go out there, Josh Brolin said something like, “Let’s shut these fuckers up.” We went out there, and I didn’t even know how it was possible, but it got even less laughs than the zero laughs at dress rehearsal. It was like somebody had created an anti-laugh machine.

I don’t think it’s the first time I’ve been accused of not having my finger on the pulse of what people like comedically, but if I went back to the show, and my memory was erased, and someone handed that sketch to me and said, “I’m going to put you in this,” I would say, “All right, let’s do this. It looks like fun.”

Joe Piscopo (1980–84): “Nick the Knock”

Season 7, Episode 6Host: Bernadette PetersStarring: Joe Piscopo, Mary Gross

Michael “Mr. Mike” O’Donoghue wrote this deeply surreal sketch about a “very strange” TV clown visited by a fairy (Mary Gross) who sees beauty in him and recites a poem about truth. Then he eats her spine.

I think I’ve psychologically blocked it out. I don’t even remember it making it to air.

The character himself was a private joke between my brother, Richard, and myself when we were kids in Bloomfield, New Jersey, running around the house like wackos. Michael O’Donoghue said he wanted to shock the audience. I wanted to do it because of my Jersey Guy character. He was born out of desperation to get in one character that would catch on with people, and he did. But that just wasn’t Saturday Night Live material, man. It was more sitcom, and I was concerned that people from the original cast would think it was too broad, and that bothered me. “Nick the Knock” was so bizarre; that was Saturday Night Live. I would never have written anything like it. O’Donoghue did what he had to do, and I did whatever he wanted.

Laraine Newman (1975–1980): “The Fritzie Kringle Show”

Season 1, Episode 8Host: Candice BergenStarring: Laraine Newman

The host of a TV cooking show invariably consumes the ingredients she’s using. The character was featured in an actual thesis, “The Fat Female Bodies of Saturday Night Live: Uncovering the Normative Cultural Power of a Countercultural Comedy Institution.”

The stakes for airtime were high. This was one character I brought from the Groundlings. It was totally silly, and very personal in terms of taste; my sister and I wrote it. It played really well at the Groundlings, but I didn’t do it that much. When I did it at SNL, it was really piecing together what I could remember of it. It must have done well enough [at dress rehearsal] to make it to 11:30. And it just, oh my God, it died so bad.

When I see it in reruns, there are no laughs. None. All I can tell you is that it died a rat’s death.

I was not daunted, fortunately. I carried on. The main thing that’s important for any cast member is that sometimes, confidence and commitment can carry you through a sketch that might not necessarily be that strong. It really is kind of a game where you pretend you’re doing great. But we didn’t see Fritzie again!

Rachel Dratch (1999–2006): “Mr. Kotter”

Cut after dress rehearsal

An office worker who idolizes and dresses like comedian Gabe Kaplan is distressed to learn that Kaplan himself visited the office, but none of his coworkers told him. This is one of the “biggest-failing sketches at dress of all time,” according to Will Ferrell, the man who wrote it.

It just totally died. It was silent to the point that we were looking at each other and behind our eyes laughing at what’s happening here. The audience was not on board from minute one, and they stayed off board for the entire thing.

But Will would just commit to it even harder. He gets a kind of glimmer in his eye, like, We all know this isn’t working how we wanted it to, but I’m going to embrace that. He was going to talk even slower and louder and dig into the fact that it wasn’t working. He embraces the risk. If it’s a sketch you wrote that bombs, you’re not gleeful, but that group panic can be funny. It’s this bonding, a foxhole kind of thing.

Bill Hader (2006–2013): “Song for Daddy”

Season 38, Episode 13Cut after dress rehearsalHost: Justin BieberStarring: Bill Hader, Justin Bieber, Fred ArmisenA country singer tells the sad story behind the song he is about to sing.

It was written by me, John Solomon, and Rob Klein. They wrote a lot of amazing stuff for me while I was there, particularly this Vietnam vet in a puppet class. The sketch was a play on when you watch a singer tell a story about what the song they’re about to sing means to them.

The buildup is that it’s a very sad story he’s telling about how his dad died, and they bring out these incredibly strange musical instruments that are out of Dr. Seuss. Justin Bieber was the host, and I looked out in the audience, and it was all teenage girls, and I thought, Well, this isn’t going to work. We did it at dress, and—I’ve never seen this—a piece of the set almost fell on Justin. I incorporated it into the sketch—“Well, the wall almost fell on you, son.” And Justin called out, “This isn’t part of it,” which broke whatever illusion we had.

Everything that could go wrong, went wrong. This was my last season, so I’m pretty much leaning into it. My first season I would have been like, Oh man, this is bombing, and I would kind of bail. I remember walking upstairs to the writers room on the ninth floor afterward, and when I walked in, they all started howling because it was a total train wreck.

Sarah Sherman (2021–present): “Waiters”

Season 49, Episode 10Host: Dakota JohnsonStarring: Dakota Johnson, Sarah Sherman, James Austin Johnson, Molly Kearney, Devon Walker, Chloe TroastTwo waiters insist they don’t need to write down a family’s order and proceed to get everything horribly wrong. Chicken fongers, anyone?

I don’t think of it so much as a bomb as it was a shocking disconnect. Me and the Please Don’t Destroy boys were up Tuesday night, which is writing night. I’m not kidding: Martin Herlihy showed me a draft, and I was crying laughing; couldn’t get a word out. There’s a lot of laughter in this job, and that sticks out as the hardest I’ve ever laughed.

We go to blocking rehearsal, everyone is crying laughing. We rehearse it the day of the show, crying laughing. It’s the first sketch in the show at dress rehearsal. Silence. So I was like, This is getting cut. But the producers saw all the rehearsals and had faith in it. It had gotten enough of a reaction where it wasn’t a total bomb, so it remained the first sketch of the night—which is a big tone-setter for the show. It just goes to show you that SNL is such a wild beast. It’s impossible to predict what will connect with an audience. But I do not back down.

Jon Lovitz (1985–1990): “Executive Island”

Season 14, Episode 8Host: Kevin KlineStarring: Kevin Kline, Jon Lovitz, Nora Dunn, Phil Hartman, Kevin Nealon, Dana CarveyIt’s business as usual for ad executives marooned on an island after their plane crashes.

Kevin Kline is the pilot, and we’re all passengers, and we come into a jungle clearing. You know the scene in the movies where someone says, “We have enough food for this many days”? But we’re all obsessed with work.

We come out of the forest the first time to silence. And when I say silence, I mean no laughs. Then it goes, day two, with Kevin and seven of us coming in again. No laughs. We come out the third time. Nothing. I looked at [someone in the cast, and I’m whispering, “We’re dying, and we have to go out and come back in four more times.” So we go out the fourth time. I look at her and I held up three fingers. We knew the sketch wasn’t going to get any funnier. Oh my God.

And then they go, “We’re doing it on air.” And I said, “What do you mean? The sketch didn’t work.” And Jim Downey, who was the head writer, said, “They’ll love it at home.”

Tracy Morgan (1996–2003)

I wrote a sketch in my first season; I think it was a talk show. I poured everything into it. You want to know what it feels like [to not get your sketch on air]? IT SUCKS! You’ve got family and friends at home watching the show. They don’t just want to see Will Ferrell [laughs]. They want to see you. Yeah, I was disappointed; I was hurt. That night I sat in my dressing room and cried, but I never gave up.

Cheri Oteri (1995–2000): “Card Store”

Cut after dress rehearsal

I wrote this sketch with Molly Shannon about two very boring women who own a card store. They would approach customers to help people pick out a card as if they were working on commission. The audience found the sketch even more boring than the characters. We were embarrassed at how bad it bombed, but we couldn’t stop laughing. It just didn’t work.

You do feel terrible, because everyone is vying for a shot to get on air, and if you get that shot, you want more than anything to knock it out of the park. The show’s lineup is displayed on Lorne’s corkboard, with index cards all lined up from 11:30 until the end of the show. When a sketch is cut, the card is moved to the right on the corkboard, and between dress and air, you find out what sketches made it to air.

When we saw the sketch was cut, we took the index card off the corkboard and hid it underneath a stereo. In the weeks and months afterward, we would pull the card out from under the stereo and pretend like we were going to stick it back up on the corkboard as the first sketch of the show. Of course, we were too scared to do it, but we cracked up at the thought of it. The index card might still be underneath that stereo.

Leslie Jones (2014–2019): “The Arguing Couple”

Season 40, Episode 5Host: Chris RockStarring: Chris Rock, Leslie Jones, Bobby Moynihan, Sasheer ZamataAn elderly married couple pick at each other as they prepare to go out.

It was my first major sketch. Chris [Rock] and I played Sasheer Zamata’s parents. We love each other, but we say crazy stuff back and forth. I came out and I froze. It was two seconds, but it felt like five minutes. I couldn’t figure out which lines [on the cue cards] were mine.

What I remember is how kind everybody was afterward. I was horrified, but here comes Lorne, and he says, “Baby, you just learned you’re on live TV, and it will be okay.” Here comes Kenan [Thompson], and he says, “Yeah, you got it out of the way.” I remember Vanessa Bayer sat beside me, and she said, “You know what’s so good about what happened? It won’t happen again.”

I was so overwhelmed. I thought people were going to be pissed.

After that, it was funny as hell when a sketch didn’t hit. A sketch might destroy at the table and at dress, and then you get to live, and it’s like nothing. Matter of fact, we hated when it destroyed in dress, because most likely it’s going to bomb live. Lorne is very good at knowing whether or not we should press on. If you look at the sketch now, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell. Or maybe they used the dress rehearsal version. The dress one, I killed it.

Ana Gasteyer (1996–2002): “At Home With Deandra Wells”

Season 26, Episode 7Host: Val KilmerCut after dress rehearsal

You bomb in dress a lot, and it is completely humiliating. You’re working with the NBA all-stars of American comedy, and you want the respect of your colleagues almost more than the audience. To have a writer you really respect say, “That piece really made me laugh this week,” was much more meaningful in some ways than the concept of a big wide audience out there.

Deandra Wells was a character I did a few times. She was a pop diva who was just unrelentingly cruel to her band. She was really fun to play, and we did her a few times successfully. But then we did this Christmas special, “At Home With Deandra Wells.” It was super elaborate. We had a Christmas tree set; we had jewel-cut individual CD cases of her various albums; we had this massive six-foot-five portrait to hang over the fireplace. Val Kilmer, who was hosting, played Kris Kristofferson. So much production went into it, but it was a horrible, horrible flop at dress. I have a very clear memory of that.

We went off the stage, and we couldn’t stop laughing at how badly it bombed, because it was just so extraordinary in its fail. Will Ferrell is so great about that. He’s like, “Whatever, it’s part of the process.”