Photo: Rex USA.Last Saturday, Melissa McCarthy made her third trip to the Saturday Night Live stage, but not every episode hit comedy gold. Yes — for every Justin Timberlake, there's a January Jones.
Of course, nobody knows that better than series creator Lorne Michaels. While his New York profile doesn't specifically name his pick for the worst SNL host of all time, it does highlight a couple of celebrity stinkers.
"I think the Steven Seagal show was just a really hard week," he says in reference to an old Al Franken joke, in which Michaels outs the martial arts master as a horrible host. "I’m not sure, on an objective level, that he was necessarily the worst."
Late comedy legend Milton Berle also ranks as a troublesome talent. "Milton Berle I was just not prepared for," he says. "I’m more sympathetic to him now than I was then, in 1979. He had ruled this place for so many years, and we were these kids telling him no. In the middle of the monologue, a steel pipe hit the floor, which had never happened before. Milton went, 'Uh-oh, NBC just dropped another show.' I see the stagehand, who was an old stagehand here that Milton knew. I said, 'Willy, what happened?' He said, 'Milton told me to drop this pipe.' I said, 'Milton, we don’t do planned ad-libs.' He put his hand on my shoulder and went, 'I know. Satire. Don’t worry, I’ll make it CBS.'"
With so many good stories, you're no doubt wondering when the show-runner will get on Twitter. The answer: not anytime soon. Says Michaels, "I don’t tweet for a very simple reason, which is that I drink." Please, somebody make that a sketch. (Uproxx)
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT