8 Celebrities Who’ve Turned Down Saturday Night Live Gigs

Find out why these stars don’t want to be on SNL…

1. Mark Ruffalo

Many SNL fans wonder why Mark Ruffalo hasn yet hosted the show — and he recently revealed it isn’t because he hasn’t been asked. It turns out Mark has been offered a hosting gig but he turned it down because he’s dyslexic and the idea of having to read the cue cards “scares” him.

“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. 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,” he said on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, adding, “I have the double whammy. I’m dyslexic, and I have a hard time memorizing stuff.”

2. Chris Evans

Chris Evans says he has no interest in hosting Saturday Night Live. Although he’s been asked to take the stage on multiple occasions, he’s turned it down because he thinks the whole thing would make him too nervous. On top of that, he admits he doesn’t think he’s that funny.

“I’ve avoided hosting SNL like the plague for years now just because I’m so scared. It’s terrifying to me. To me, it would just be one of those things that every single night I would wake up in a cold sweat,” he told ET Canada. “I just know how I would feel. It would just be an everyday anxiety, constant regret. Why did I do this? I could have been comfortable at my house, in my bed, not worrying about this.”

3. Mindy Kaling

The Office had been on the air for just about a year when star Mindy Kaling auditioned to join the SNL cast. While she wasn’t offered a spot, she says they asked if she wanted to write for the show. Ultimately, The Office creator Greg Daniels said he couldn’t let her out of her contract with the show and she had to turn SNL down.

“Greg used to write for SNL, and he had known that being on SNL was my great dream. He said, ‘Listen. If you get cast on the show, I’ll let you break your contract and go do it, but if they ask you to write, I can’t, because you have a job writing here, plus you’re on the show. So I’m not going to let you leave the show so you can go be in New York,'” Mindy told The A.V. Club.

She continued, “At that time, I missed New York so badly. I hated LA for a long time, and I wanted to leave it. I had these fantasies of going to SNL and falling in love with some writer on SNL, of getting married and living in New York. That was really heartbreaking to have to turn down, but then I got to guest-write in the spring.'”

4. Michael Cera

Back when Michael Cera was a young actor, his roles in Superbad and Juno skyrocketed him to fame. He quickly realized life in the public eye wasn’t for him and decided to take a step back from jobs that would push him further into the spotlight — including an opportunity to host Saturday Night Live.

“There was a point where I wanted to stop taking jobs that would make me more famous,” he told The Guardian, noting that his agents weren’t happy that he said no to SNL. “I was kind of having a bit of a crisis … I was really not enjoying the level of heat.”

5. Jennifer Aniston

Before Jennifer Aniston landed her starring role on Friends, she auditioned to become a cast member on SNL. According to Adam Sandler, Jennifer was actually offered a spot on the show but turned it down in order to appear on Friends.

“We wanted Aniston to be on the show with us. And she, I remember being on the ninth floor where Lorne Michael’s office was and seeing Jen come in. I was like, ‘Oh my God, there’s Aniston. Is she about to be on our show?'” Adam said on the Oprah Winfrey Show. “[I remember thinking], ‘She said no?’ She’s gonna do that Friends? What the hell is Friends?” That was the truth.'”

6. Johnny Knoxville

Before Jackass took off, the show was pitched to several different networks. The cast, including Johnny Knoxville, had made a tape showing what the series was all about and it eventually was passed on to SNL. After watching what the guys were doing, Johnny was offered a spot as a cast member on SNL — but he ultimately turned it down to stay with his friends.

“It was at the point where I either say yes to my friends, where we had all the control, or yes to Saturday Night Live, where none of my friends were really going to be there and I had no control,” Knoxville told the Washington Times. “I just thought I made the right decision.”

7. Catherine O‘Hara

Back in the early 1980s, Catherine O’Hara was appearing on Second City’s sketch comedy show SCTV when SNL producer Dick Ebersol asked her to join the cast. She agreed and headed to Studio 8H — but didn’t even make it to the season premiere. Catherine says just two weeks in, she realized SNL wasn’t for her and turned down the opportunity.

“I hung out with some nice people, tried to come up with some ideas … but I never really felt involved. I had to leave. I said I’d made a huge mistake. I’m not proud of that. I felt stupid doing it. But I had to come home. I couldn’t not be with them,” she told the Toronto Sun.

8. Andy Dick

Andy Dick had just begun his career when he was offered a spot as a cast member on Saturday Night Live. At the time, Andy says he wasn’t confident enough to take the job and ended up turning it down.

“Early on in my career they just asked me if I wanted to do Saturday Night Live. Literally, they were just offering it to me,” Andy told Laughspin. “I said no because I had just come off The Ben Stiller Show, but the truth of the matter is I was afraid I would not be able to do a few characters every week. I didn’t have the confidence that I do now. Looking back, I could’ve easily [done it].”