Dana Carvey was a dominant figure in comedy throughout the 1980s and 1990s. From 1986 to 1993,
he served as the undisputed host of Saturday Night Live and was known for
his recurring roles as the Church Lady, Garth from "Wayne's World," and Hans from "Hans and
Franz". But at the peak of his career, he mysteriously vanished from the limelight.
Join FactsVerse as we uncover why Dana Carvey left Hollywood for a simpler life.
From 1986 through 1993, Carvey played a cast member on Saturday Night Live. After ratings
had been declining, he joined other comedians on the show, such as Phil Hartman, and helped
restore the program to its previous splendor. The Church Lady, one of Carvey's characters,
was particularly well-liked, as were his other personas, including The Grumpy Old Man,
Hans from the Hans and Franz skit, and his impressions of Ross Perot and George H. W. Bush.
Then came Garth, another figure for which Carvey is well known. The inspiration for Garth came
from Carvey's brother. In 1989, he played the character for the first time in a sketch that
was eventually turned into a movie. However, Carvey almost left the project because Myers
kept removing his contributions from the script. Carvey stated that Mike was the one who was mostly
working on the script and that he was merely adding to it during an interview with Howard
Stern. His contributions, however, eventually ceased to be used. Thus, three weeks prior to
the filming, Carvey made the decision to stop and informed Mike of his decision.
Carvey went forward with the film for reasons we'll probably never know,
and it became a huge hit as a result. The follow-up was released in 1993, although it
was not as successful as the original. Following five additional nominations,
Carvey took home his first Primetime Emmy later in 1993 for his work on Saturday Night
Live. Coincidentally, that turned out to be Carvey's final season on Saturday Night Live.
But that was pretty much the last time he made the cover story for any publication.
Here's why Carvey hasn't been in the limelight since his departure from Saturday Night Live.
Family Over Fame After leaving SNL in 1993,
Carvey appeared in a series of films that he describes as terrible, including Trapped in
Paradise alongside Nicolas Cage. He did not want to be separated from his two young kids,
Dex, who was two years old at the time, and Tom, who was an infant.
Before finally deciding on prioritizing his children over his career, he had a couple
of occurrences that acted as a wake-up call for him. One such occurrence was during the
production of Wayne's World 2 in 1993. One of his sons approached him when he was sporting
the distinctive long blond wig that makes up his character Garth during filming and said, "Daddy,
no funny hair," before breaking down in tears. Another wake-up call for him was when he had his
kid with him on the set of Trapped in Paradise. When asked why he decided to bring his children
to the Trapped in Paradise production, he remarked that it felt uncomfortable and awkward to deliver
his children to a babysitter, so he worked with the only option he had left. While on set,
his first son suffered from numerous ear infections while the other son contracted the flu,
and that only added more work to his load. During production, he only enjoyed short periods of sleep
so he could try to keep his youngest son amused in the basement by dragging him around in a cart.
The two occurrences served as Carvey's wake-up calls to devote his whole attention to his
family. And in response to that, he relocated his wife and children to a small village in northern
California, where he claimed to have never had to lock their house.. Dex and Tom Carvey, who
are both now in their 20s, are following in their father's footsteps by pursuing comedic careers.
Health Complications Dana Carvey was sidelined for some time
due to the unfortunate circumstances of having to recover from major surgery and then undergoing the
same procedure again due to complications. In the 1990s, medical professionals learned that
Carvey experienced excruciating chest discomfort caused by improper blood flow to the heart. The
artery was blocked again after each of the three angioplasties, which involve placing and inflating
a small balloon to keep the artery open. The ultimate and most dangerous surgical procedure
possible to address the condition, a double bypass, was finally performed on Carvey in 1998.
However, the excruciating chest pains
persisted unabatedly. In order to determine what was wrong, Carvey saw his surgeon once more. Tests
indicated that the physician had bypassed the incorrect artery, which was a horrible error.
Carvey was forced to undergo another complicated and painful double bypass surgery, but this time
with a different surgeon. Carvey filed a $7.5 million lawsuit against the original heart
surgeon, which was resolved out of court in 2000. Speaking of "million", Carvey came close
to earning that much after leaving SNL, but for some reason, humbly walked away.
Leaving Money on the Table Every player in the entertainment
industry has once or twice turned down a holy grail, and Carvey is no different. He could have
played a role on late-night television and might even be presenting a program on network TV now,
but he didn't really want to. After 30 years as host of The Tonight Show,
Johnny Carson decided to leave the show in the early 1990s, and Jay Leno was
hired to take over. Carson's decision left David Letterman, the host of Late Night,
so incensed that he left Late Night vacant and went to CBS to compete with The Tonight Show.
Lorne Michaels, the executive producer, and creator of Saturday Night Live was tasked
by NBC with selecting a host, so he turned to his SNL ensemble. The position was offered to Carvey,
who had become one of the cast members with the most popular in recent memory. As Letterman's
likely successor, NBC handed him $1 million, along with a Beatles album autographed by all
four Beatles and valued at $400,000, only to evaluate the offer. Carvey debated doing Late
Night for a year before deciding against it because it is exhausting to host a show every
night. He considered it an enormous slog, and to spend years only as a late-night host was
a major decision for him. He added that it took lots of emotional energy to be on TV that much,
which he didn't think he had at the time. While he hasn't explicitly expressed that as a regret,
it's easier to see why he would do so privately, given the failure of his show.
Better Luck Next Time In 1996, Carvey returned to television
with The Dana Carvey Show, just three years after departing the cozy confines of Saturday Night
Live's sketch comedy program. It was a commercial failure, even though it received excellent reviews
and became a famed cult success among comic nerds. It was slated by ABC to premiere just after the
family-friendly smash hit Home Improvement. With Disney's planned purchase of the network,
everyone must have assumed that they'd be getting the mild-mannered version of "Carvey” the Church
Lady, Garth, and George Bush. Instead, they received something bizarre, quirky, and crazy.
For instance, Carvey played President Bill Clinton in the first sketch of the first episode,
displaying his "tender side" by exposing a large set of breasts and nursing a number of
puppies. Other standout pieces were "The Nauseous Servers," in which waiters gag while delivering
the specials; and "Skinheads from Maine," in which men speaking in a heavy New England accent scream
racist things. Despite being a commercial failure, many of the most significant comedy writers and
entertainers of the past 20 years developed their skills on the show. Oscar-winning writers
of Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Charlie Kaufman, The Office co-creator Greg
Daniels, Dino Stamatopoulos, 30 Rock co-creator Robert Carlock, and showrunner Louis C.K. were
among the writers on the program. Steve Colbert and Stephen Carell portrayed the squeamish servers
who were disgusted by the cuisine. The Dana Carvey Show was discontinued after seven weeks due to
declining viewership following the first episode. Well, he tried and failed, no big deal. But the
subsequent sketches didn't see the light of day. After his first show failed,
it took Carvey almost 15 years before he tried sketch comedy once more. He co-created the Fox
television series Spoof in 2010 with Spike Feresten, writer for The Dana Carvey Show.
This TV sketch show by Carvey was entirely pre-recorded and did not include any in-studio
segments or a live audience. Fox purchased a pilot but decided against ordering a full season. Two of
the segments from Spoof's one and only episode, which was set to focus on parodies of movies
and TV series, have been made public online. The first, Weird Island, is a Lost parody, and
the second, Charles Darwin: A Game of Shadows, is an action film in the Sherlock Holmes tradition.
Comeback
He has returned to stand-up and primarily does voice work.
He returned in 2002 with movies like The Master of Disguise, but after that, he disappeared
until 2010. He attempted to produce a second sketch comedy program called Spoof, but it was
never shown, so he switched to voice acting. He provided the voices for several television
series, including The Secret Life of Pets and its follow-up, Hotel Transylvania 2,
Ricky and Morty, and The Fairly Odd Parents. Regarding the latter film,
Carvey commented that it was an awesome experience to be in a really terrific animated picture
franchise that has its own identity. Surprisingly, "Late Night" wasn't the only gig he turned down.
He humbly turned down Ratatouille and Madagascar. He claimed to have been busy with his kids.
In 2017, he picked up a trade from his past, stand-up comedy. He shared the
title of comic-in-residence with Jon Lovitz at The Foundry in Las Vegas, where he performed stand-up,
comedic sketches, and musical numbers in 20 concerts during 2017. Some of his specials
include Squatting Monkeys Tell No Lies, Critics Choice, and Dana Carvey: Straight White Male, 60,
He recently collaborated on a project with his adult sons, went back to
stand-up, and started creating podcasts. He and Myers already reconnected at SNL's 40th
anniversary in 2015 and the Oscars in 2019, but this time they are revisiting their Wayne's World
identities for a Super Bowl teaser commercial. The Uber Eats commercial premiered during
the most recent SNL show and hinted at additional material to be included in the game. Even though
it's not quite the reunion we had hoped for, we'll take it. Simply put, it's nice to see Carvey back.
According to Garvey, portraying Garth was initially constricting, but after a while,
it has become a part of him, like receiving a new pair of underwear.
There you have it. It's now time to hear from you. Do you think Carvey made a mistake
by declining NBC's Late Night offer? What would you do if you were him at that moment?