Since Saturday Night Live debuted 1975,
more than 150 talented performers have brought laughter to America. But while nothing lasts
forever, you may be surprised at the real reason why some of these stars left SNL.
"Good evening. I'm God, and here's the news."
Thanks to "Weekend Update," his show-opening pratfalls, and bumbling impersonation of
then-President Gerald Ford, Chevy Chase became the first breakout star of the original Saturday
Night Live cast. Chase was also the first major cast member to exit the hit series,
leaving part way through SNL's second season.
It was widely assumed Chase left to pursue a movie career; his first big-screen starring
role came in 1978's Foul Play. However, in 2007 he revealed to Today the real reason he left, saying,
"I left for a girl that I was in love with. It had nothing to [do] with lucrative film deals
awaiting me [...] I was very much in love with a girl who just would not leave California."
The comedian offered more details in a 2011 interview with the Los Angeles Times,
recalling he was, quote, "infatuated" with future ex-wife Jacqueline Carlin, saying,
"[She] would not move to New York and insisted that I come there.
It was all nuts, looking back on it. But I did regret it."
These days, Harry Shearer is best known for providing the voices of Mr. Burns,
Principal Skinner, and numerous other characters on The Simpsons.
He also holds the rare distinction of quitting Saturday Night Live not once, but twice.
Hired as a writer-performer for the 1979-'80 season, Shearer wound up quitting shortly
after he was hired, later telling IGN that his time on the show was, quote, "Living hell."
However, Shearer returned to SNL five years later, during the 1984-'85 season.
When asked why he would return given his previous experience, the comedian-actor explained that he
and his This Is Spinal Tap co-stars, Michael McKean and Christopher Guest, had performed on
the show as their fictional rock alter-egos, and were treated so well he felt things had changed.
That feeling proved to be short-lived. In the oral history Live From New York, Shearer said
"I was pretty f**king miserable for virtually the entire season."
When he finally quit, SNL's then-producer Dick Ebersol put out a press release announcing Shearer
had parted ways with the show due to, quote, "creative differences." In Live From New York,
Shearer declared that when a reporter called asking for comment, he'd quipped,
"Yeah, I was creative and they were different."
Paul Shaffer was hired by Saturday Night Live musical director Howard Shore to play piano with
the show's band. Shaffer eventually began making on-camera appearances.
When the original cast left en masse at the end of the 1979-'80 season, so did he.
In 2018, Shafer told Closer Weekly,
"I did the first five years of SNL and everyone in the original group was leaving,
so I decided to see what else was out there."
After a couple of years working as a studio musician, he was summoned to meet
with a young comedian who was launching a new late-night show for NBC. According to Shaffer,
he and David Letterman, quote, "hit it off right away." Shaffer was hired as Letterman's
bandleader, a role he would continue in for 33 years, right into the next millennium.
"In the new millennium, people will… FREAK OUT! They'll FREAK OUT! They're gonna FREAK OUT!!"
Arguably one of Saturday Night Live's most beloved seasons was the 10th, as in 1984, the show brought
heavy-hitters Billy Crystal and Martin Short into the fold. While Crystal delivered memorable
characters like the suave Fernando, Short resurrected such SCTV favorites as Ed Grimley.
Despite their success on the show, neither returned for the 11th season. As it turned out,
they never intended to. In Live From New York, Short explained,
"I had a one-year contract. I certainly approached that show not as someone who
was going to be around, obviously, for more than one year. So I felt that I had to do
a lot and be in as many interesting things as possible, because it was just a limited time."
Crystal, who also exited at the end of his single SNL season, said,
"I never put a time limit on how long I would be there or what it would give me or get me [...] I
just felt personally as a performer and as a creative person I had to give it my shot."
Dennis Miller joined the cast of Saturday Night Live in 1985 for its 11th season, taking over
the "Weekend Update" anchor desk. With his wry delivery and endless string of obscure pop-culture
references, Miller's quirky comedic style proved to be a hit with viewers until his exit in 1991.
Miller's next move was to host a late-night talk show, The Dennis Miller Show,
which debuted in January 1992. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune,
Miller explained that his departure was spurred by the birth of his son.
"I'm not trying to sound too maudlin, [but] something about his birth reacquainted this
urge in me to strive for things. When I had the kid I thought,
'Why don't you see what you can do, why don't you test it a little? Make the boy proud.'"
That test, unfortunately, was not successful: by July of that year, The Dennis Miller Show
was cancelled. Speaking about the show's failure with the Los Angeles Times,
Miller was circumspect, saying, quote, "People lose their jobs every day."
Norm Macdonald joined Saturday Night Live for its 19th season in 1993,
taking over the "Weekend Update" anchor duties. One of Macdonald's
most frequent targets was former NFL player O.J. Simpson, who was then on trial for murder.
"...sleepy truckers are responsible for one thousand deaths a year. In second place,
O.J. Simpson, at two deaths a year."
According to legend, Macdonald was fired from SNL in 1998
because NBC executive Don Ohlmeyer was good friends with Simpson.
Macdonald told Live From New York that when he was fired, he was told it was because of Ohlmeyer,
so he actually called Ohlmeyer to find out why. The exec didn't mention Simpson,
instead telling Macdonald that "Weekend Update" was, quote, "just not as funny as it should be."
"Oh my lord, I swear to god, Norm, that was the stupidest thing you've ever said."
In hindsight, Macdonald said he wasn't bitter
and was simply happy that he was able to be on SNL at all.
"To me, just getting there was the thing."
Ben Stiller joined the cast of Saturday Night Live in 1989,
but quit after just six episodes. During a 2018 interview with The Howard Stern Show,
Stiller explained he left the series because his primary ambition at that point was to
direct short films. When Stiller was hired for the comedy series, he was under the assumption
that's what he'd be doing, making comedic short films that would air between live sketches.
Instead, he found himself performing on live television — and hated it.
He told Stern,
"I knew that I wasn't good live
because I would get nervous. [...] I just felt I couldn't do well in that situation."
However, there were no hard feelings about his abortive SNL experience.
Stiller subsequently returned to host the show twice,
and in 2018 appeared as President Donald Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen.
Another short-lived Saturday Night Live cast member is Sarah Silverman,
who was a featured player for a single season in 1993-'94. Despite her subsequent success in film,
TV, and stand-up comedy, her tenure on the show was as forgettable as it was brief.
In a 2005 interview with The Believer, Silverman didn't even want to discuss the experience,
because she felt it was, quote, "boring," but did reveal she learned she'd been fired by fax. Ouch.
Though she eventually returned as a guest host, Better Call Saul star Bob Odenkirk, who was
an SNL writer at the time, told The New Yorker it made sense that she didn't work out at SNL.
"I could see how it wouldn't work at SNL because she's got her own voice,
she's very much Sarah Silverman all the time. She can play a character but she doesn't disappear
into the character — she makes the character her. She doesn't really do character voices. She puts
out stuff that she would appreciate and then you can like it or not — she doesn't give a s**t."
In Jay Mohr's tell-all book, Gasping for Airtime,
he recounted his tumultuous two seasons on the show as an anxiety-ridden,
self-medicating mess who struggled, mostly unsuccessfully, to get his sketches on the air.
One of those sketches that did make it into the show, however, ultimately led to his downfall.
As Mohr explained, he plagiarised an entire sketch from a routine by comedian Rick Shapiro.
After the sketch aired, Mohr was called into a meeting with Lorne Michaels, who asked him
twice whether he knew Shapiro's work. Mohr lied and said he had never heard of Shapiro.
Somehow, Mohr kept his job, but only temporarily; at the end of the season he was let go. He wrote,
"What I did was inexcusable, and no apology in the world could ever make up for it."
Adam Sandler and the late Chris Farley were among the new talent brought aboard Saturday
Night Live in 1990 for the show's 16th season, and they quickly became fan-favorite standouts.
Despite their success, though, five years later they were both abruptly
fired without warning before the start of the show's 21st season.
Sandler discussed the experience during an appearance on Howard Stern's radio show, saying,
"At the time, I was hurt because I didn't know what else I was gonna do. [...] But I remember
when I saw Farley, he said to me, 'Me too, they don't want me either.' We were both like, 'F**k
this s**t.' We got mad together, pretended we weren't sad, and pretended this was for the best."
Sandler didn't return to the show for almost a quarter of a century, finally hosting in 2019.
Al Franken was part of the writing staff of Saturday Night Live's first season in 1975,
and remained on the show as a writer-performer for decades — before
leaving when he lost out on the "Weekend Update" anchor spot to Norm Macdonald.
Franken then turned to political satire, writing his bestseller Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot
and Other Observations in 1996, and in 2004 began hosting a political radio show.
In that show's final episode in 2007, Franken made a big announcement:
he was running for a Senate seat in his home state of Minnesota.
In 2009, Franken was elected to the Senate, and was re-elected in 2014. However, it all
infamously came to an end in 2017, when Franken announced he would be resigning
after several allegations of sexual harassment were leveled against him.
Fans of Saturday Night Live were saddened to learn in the summer
of 2019 that Leslie Jones had decided to leave the show after more than five years.
Though many hoped the rumors were false, Jones verified on Twitter that she
was indeed leaving by her own choice, saying that she hoped fans would be excited when they, quote,
"see some of the amazing projects and adventures that I have coming up very soon."
The first of those projects was Leslie Jones: Time Machine,
her first-ever Netflix stand-up comedy special, which dropped in January 2020.
In addition, Jones also signed on to do something she'd never done before: host a game show,
as she inked a deal to headline ABC's fall revival of the classic series Supermarket Sweep.
Speaking with The New York Times, Jones explained exactly why she decided to exit SNL when she did.
"I'm 52 and tired. SNL is a hard job. It's 100 hours a week. Also,
it's an institution. I get bored. And I want to do different things."
"I'm just busy. I mean, the show, movies, interviews, stand-up. It's a lot!"
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