You’ve got to hand it to Lorne Michaels. After NBC forced him to fire newly hired cast member Shane Gillis for racist and homophobic remarks, he figured out a way to make Gillis a constant presence on the show. He’s brought in Gillis to host for two consecutive seasons (you can pretty much count on a third), and this past weekend, he brought in Gillis to cameo as Curtis Sliwa in a cold open sketch about the New York mayoral election. The cameo has been a Lorne secret weapon for years, a way to juice the show’s ratings with a surprise appearance by an electric celebrity. Some of those guest spots haven’t aged as well as others, however. Here are five times that celebrities ended up in the SNL Cameo Hall of Shame.
Jared Fogle
Olympian Michael Phelps was a terrible choice to host the Season 34 premiere. As a comedian, he’s an awesome swimmer. But somehow the soggy Phelps wasn’t the worst thing about his episode. An end-of-show sketch about the Michael Phelps Diet — a high-carb plan that was great for world-class athletes and terrible for everyone else — is denounced by convicted sex offender Jared Fogle. “I know a little something about weight loss,” he says, “and I can honestly say, this diet sucks a foot long.”
P. Diddy
The in-jail-for-now hip-hop star was Robert De Niro’s musical guest in 2010, but brought some attitude to an Andy Samberg sketch as well. Samberg was the Blizzard Man, and the radio execs are dubious about his talents. “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” argued Diddy. “My man is like R. Kelly …”
And maybe it’s best to stop right there.
O.J. Simpson
While he hosted the show in 1978, the Juice also cameoed on SNL’s 15th anniversary special. The football star, who was found liable for the murders of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman in a civil trial, had no way of knowing he’d later be immortalized in SNL history by Norm Macdonald’s nonstop punchlines.
James Franco
Franco, who has admitted to having sex with students at his acting school and exchanging sexually charged DMs with a seventeen-year-old, showed up during Freaks and Geeks costar Seth Rogen’s hosting gig in 2014.
During Rogen’s monologue, he pretended to read from his journal, including an entry about pranking Franco by posing as a girl on Instagram. “Told him I was way young,” Rogen said in a joke he’d probably like back.
A grinning Franco bounded onstage to join Rogen. “Great prank, buddy, I’ve been waiting at the Ace Hotel for three days.”
Chevy Chase
When Chris Farley returned to host the show, he was in rough shape — so SNL decided to make fun of his condition. In the show’s cold open, Tim Meadows tries to convince Lorne that an out-of-breath Farley is clean, and to prove his old pal is OK, he trots out Chevy Chase as Farley’s sobriety sponsor.
“You’re Farley’s sponsor?” asks Lorne. “You just got out of Betty Ford!”
The idea of an addict sponsoring an addict would have been funnier if Farley were sober and healthy. But “Chris’s condition was obvious as soon as he showed up,” Robert Smigel says in The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts.
“I was in shock when I saw the opening sketch,” said Farley’s brother Tom. “Chris bursts in, and he’s obviously in terrible shape. They’d made jokes about Chris’s drinking before, but that was when he was sober and doing well. This was not funny at all.”
The show was the last time people like Lorne Michaels would ever speak to Farley. Enlisting Chase to endorse Farley’s sobriety made a terrible sketch idea even worse.
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