"Saturday Night Live" is probably the most stressful show on TV,
and with that stress of course, actors and staff
will occasionally butt heads. Even if the feuds managed to stay backstage,
they definitely had an impact on the show. Here are the members who couldn't stand each other.
Chevy Chase and Bill Murray were among the earliest and most notable cast members of
"Saturday Night Live," but they weren't regulars together. According to Far Out,
Chase left the series after about a year, and Murray was his replacement.
Chase made his triumphant return to "SNL" as a guest host in 1978, coming in with what
he called in the oral history "Live from New York" a, quote, "egocentric" attitude.
As a result, Chase clashed with multiple cast members, particularly Murray,
who knew him from when they worked on "National Lampoon," per Decider.
After many nasty things were said, Murray made a verbal jab at Chase, whose marriage was in a rocky
place. Chase retorted by commenting that Murray's scarred face looked like the surface of the moon.
Moments before "SNL" went live on the air, Chase cornered Murray in John Belushi's dressing room
and a physical fight broke out, with Belushi having to separate them.
News of the fight entered "SNL" lore, and when Chase hosted the show again in 1980, he and
Murray attempted to dispel the so-called rumors by performing "I Shot the Sheriff" together.
First season "SNL" breakout star Chevy Chase left the show after slightly more than one season
and very quickly started appearing in movies. He returned to the show to host eight times,
including once in 1985 when he openly and viciously antagonized multiple cast members.
Chase approached Robert Downey, Jr., son of indie filmmaker Robert Downey, Sr.,
and, according to "Live From New York," said -
"Didn't your father used to be a successful director? Whatever happened to him? Boy,
he sure died, you know, he sure went to hell."
Downey Sr. was still alive, it's worth noting.
He saved some truly audacious vitriol for Terry Sweeney,
the first openly gay cast member in "SNL" history. In "Live from New York,"
Sweeney recalled Chase approaching him with a repulsive idea, with Chase reportedly saying -
"I've got an idea for a sketch for you - How about we say you have AIDS and we weigh you every week?"
Producers were so incensed by Chase's comments that they forced him to say sorry,
which Sweeney said made Chase furious.
The last time Chevy Chase showed his face at "Saturday Night Live" was a cameo in a March
2013 episode. That's more than a year before Pete Davidson joined the cast of the show,
and even though their paths didn't cross, they still managed to forge a feud. In a
September 2018 interview with the Washington Post,
Chase profanely criticized the show that made him famous.
"But I'll just say, maybe off the record, I'm amazed that Lorne has gone so low.
I had to watch a little of it, and I just couldn't effin' believe it."
A few days after the Post article, Davidson was a guest on Howard Stern's satellite radio show,
and the host asked him to respond, which he did, saying:
"F--- Chevy Chase. I hate that dude."
Davidson noted that Chase seemingly ruined, quote,
"a really big career" with his attitude. What really bugged him
was how disrespectful Chase's comments were to "SNL" creator and producer Lorne Michaels.
Eddie Murphy is arguably the most prominent star to ever have their career launched
by "Saturday Night Live." Thanks to his domination of the show in the early 1980s,
the hilarious and charismatic young Murphy went on to star in mega-hits like "Beverly Hills Cop,"
and "The Nutty Professor." And unlike most every other "SNL" cast member-turned-A-list-film-actor,
it wasn't until 2019 that Murphy returned to the show to host.
The main reason for his absence: mid-'90s "SNL" cast member David Spade. In a 1995 installment
of his snarky talking head segment "Spade in America," Spade made a quip over a photo of
Murphy, star of back-to-back flops "Beverly Hills Cop III" and "Vampire in Brooklyn,"
"Look children, it's a falling star, make a wish! (crowd groans) Yeah! Yes! That's right!"
Murphy told Rolling Stone in 2011 of Spade's cheap shot -
"What really irritated me about it at the time was that it was a career shot."
In the mid-'90s, "Saturday Night Live" underwent a
major cast overhaul, bringing in new talent like Will Ferrell, Molly Shannon, and Chris Kattan,
with a holdover from the old cast being Norm Macdonald, primarily the show's caustic,
deadpan "Weekend Update" anchor. When Rolling Stone profiled the new "SNL" ensemble in 1997,
Macdonald made a point of going after Kattan, derisively questioning the "Mango" portrayer's
sexuality, seemingly out of nowhere. Macdonald also went on to say that he
didn't think Kattan was funny. Kattan initially brushed off his co-star's comments,
jokingly responding with his own insult to Norm.
In 1999, after Macdonald had left "SNL" and returned to host, Kattan, still a cast member,
did not appear in the episode, with a source telling the Observer -
"They had a very acrimonious relationship. Norm would rip [Kattan] to his face."
And for his part, Kattan would reportedly pester and berate Macdonald just before he'd go on air.
In the late '90s, "Clueless" director Amy Heckerling was in negotiations to helm "A Night
at the Roxbury," starring Chris Kattan and Will Ferrell as those two odious dance club regulars
who bob their heads to Haddaway's "What Is Love" in a recurring "Saturday Night Live" sketch. In
his memoir, "Baby, Don't Hurt Me" Kattan claimed that "SNL" and "A Night at the Roxbury" producer
Lorne Michaels was so desperate to sign Heckerling that he encouraged Kattan to accept her romantic
advances, which he had previously rejected. Kattan said that he did as Michaels had asked, and began
an affair with Heckerling, who ultimately produced but did not direct "A Night at the Roxbury."
Once production on the movie was completed, Kattan wrote that Ferrell didn't speak to him for months,
then confronted him backstage at "SNL", and Kattan recalled him saying -
"I didn't call you back because I didn't want to talk to you. I don't want to be your
friend anymore. I'm going to be professional and still work with you on the show, but that's it."
Ferrell didn't explicitly state his reasons,
but Kattan understood that his co-star was disgusted by his strange affair with Heckerling.
In 2009, years removed from "Saturday Night Live",Tracy Morgan published his first book,
"I Am the New Black." He reflected on his time at "SNL" in the mid-'90s and early 2000s and
dished the dirt on which cast members he didn't like: Chris Kattan and Cheri Oteri, writing -
"All I have to say about that is, where's Chris Kattan now? Where's Cheri Oteri now?"
According to Gawker, When Morgan recorded the audiobook version of "I Am the New Black," he
elaborated and improvised on his "SNL" friends and enemies, noting that he considers Will Ferrell,
Colin Quinn, and Molly Shannon his friends but definitely not Oteri and Kattan.
Tracy Morgan was a cast member on "Saturday
Night Live" from 1996 to 2003, his tenure largely overlapping that of young comedian and
impressionist Jimmy Fallon. While Fallon had some breakout recurring characters, he's likely best
and most remembered for collapsing into giggles or hysterical laughter in one sketch after another.
It can be argued that laughing, or breaking as it's also known, can ruin a sketch,
and Morgan certainly thought that Fallon's behavior did just that.
In a 2007 interview with Penthouse, Morgan suggested that Fallon would
crack up on purpose to put the spotlight on himself, and also that he hated it, saying -
"That's taking all the attention off of everybody else and putting it on you,
like, 'Oh, look at me, I'm the cute one.'"
Morgan also pointed out that Fallon didn't laugh through
sketches they appeared in together because Morgan told him not to.
This feud seems to have resolved, at least — Morgan was a guest on "Late Night with
Jimmy Fallon" 11 times and has appeared on Fallon's "The Tonight Show" on six occasions.
In 2011, "The Oprah Winfrey Show" hosted a large group of "Saturday Night Live" all-stars,
including Tina Fey, Dana Carvey, and Jane Curtin. When Winfrey asked about gender
politics in the workplace, Curtin, one of the original members in 1975, and one of
the first "Weekend Update" co-hosts described an atmosphere of sexism and hostility to women.
"Jane you ignorant slut."
According to Curtin, co-star John Belushi believed that,
quote, "women are just fundamentally not funny," and alleged that the late
"SNL" star intentionally sabotaged pieces that were written by women.
Curtin re-iterated her experiences with Belushi on "Watch What Happens Live" in 2018,
explaining that the actor was among a group of men on the show who thought that, quote,
"women should not have been" on "SNL." When host Andy Cohen asked if Belushi
thought "SNL" standout Gilda Radner had comedy chops, she said that he did, but,
"He didn't classify her as a woman. She was Gilda."
Dana Carvey was probably the biggest star on "SNL" in the late 1980s.
When Mike Myers joined the show in 1989, he brought along a character he'd originated
on Canadian television and recruited Carvey to play his sidekick. Together
they made comedy magic: "Wayne's World," a cable access show hosted by Myers' Wayne
Campbell and Carvey's Garth Algar. The sketches performed so well that they spawned two movies.
In 1997, Myers created another comedy movie franchise with "Austin Powers: International
Man of Mystery." In the parody of 1960s British spy movies, Myers portrayed swinging, groovy,
super-spy Austin Powers as well as the villain, Dr. Evil, who spoke with a pronounced and
exaggerated Canadian accent. According to Carvey on "The Howard Stern Show," Myers' Dr. Evil voice
was his take on Carvey's impersonation of their "SNL" boss, Lorne Michaels. He also allegedly
took Dr. Evil's habit of raising a pinky to his lips from Carvey's Michaels impression, saying -
"Lorne doesn't do that, but somehow it fit. The pinky thing I did."
Carvey resented Myers for years, and the latter did admit to The Hollywood Reporter -
"The Dr. Evil voice is a little bit Lorne Michaels, there are no two ways about it."
Carvey never confronted Myers, but he claims he did go over it with his therapist.
"Saturday Night Live" creator Lorne Michaels took what became a five-year leave of absence
from his show in the early 1980s, and NBC put associate producer Jean Doumanian in charge.
When Michaels left, so did the entire cast, many of them with "SNL" from its beginning,
meaning Doumanian could hire a new roster of players, per "Live From New York."
According to Doug Hill and Jeffrey Weingrad's "Saturday Night," Doumanian was most excited
about Charles Rocket and predicted he'd be the biggest star among the bunch.
But the breakout star of the early '80s "SNL" was not Charles Rocket — it was Eddie Murphy. Perhaps
resentful of the success and popularity that came so easily to his co-star, who had joined the
show at age 19, Rocket was openly scornful and dismissive of Murphy around the "SNL" offices.
Nora Dunn and Victoria Jackson were among the small group of women to
be a part of the "Saturday Night Live" cast in the mid-to-late 1980s.
They didn't do much for each other, and the rest of their co-stars seemingly didn't like
either actor as well, with Jon Lovitz recounting in "Live From New York" -
"[Dunn] fought with a lot of people. She fought with me the first year. And then the second year
she started again, and I said, 'I'm not going through this with you for another year,'"
He then recalled a time when a sketch with Dunn and Dana Carvey ended with those two actors,
quote, "just screaming at each other."
Jackson thought Dunn was the single biggest flaw on "SNL" — well,
her and another co-star. An "SNL" producer gathered the cast of this
era for a meeting to pinpoint problems with the show and Jackson recalled -
"No one was saying anything. I stood up and told everyone what was wrong with the show
was those two women — I pointed to Nora and Jan [Hooks] — and all the things they did bad:
They didn't cooperate in sketches and they slammed doors in people's
faces and backbite and backstab and all that."
Dunn and Hooks slipped out of the room, and Jackson called out the
rest of the cast for not backing her up. That reportedly prompted Carvey to quip -
"You didn't hear anyone disagreeing did you?"
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