Saturday Night Live has gained a reputation as a star-maker of the highest quality. Many a cast member has put in their time on the show, developed a following and then went on to cinematic superstardom.
But this doesn’t always happen. Some cast members don’t make an impact on the show. Some fade into obscurity after their time on the show is over. But sometimes, rarely, a cast member doesn’t catch on as a performer on the show only to become bigger stars after their unceremonious exit from 30 Rock.
This list is dedicated to those performers who went on to greater fame and fortune after their lackluster runs on the show. Not all of them became household names, but they all showed potential that the powers that be at SNL failed to notice.
Gilbert Gottfried (1980-1981)
You can be forgiven for not knowing that Gilbert Gottfried was once a Saturday Night Live cast member. He was a member during the disastrous Jean Doumanian season; a season even hardcore SNL fans wish they could forget. But he was in the cast. There is video evidence to prove it.
However, the Gilbert Gottfried that was part of SNL is barely recognizable to the Gilbert we had come to know and love in the years after. He was a baby-faced 24-year-old who described himself as a cross between John Belushi and Harry Shearer in a sketch during his first and only season. It was hard to tell if this was accurate or not, because he struggled for airtime and had to deal with worse material than either of those two had.
Gottfried did not survive the carnage that happened at the end of that season. But his firing turned out to be a blessing in disguise. He moved on to the world of stand-up, perfecting his screechy vocal delivery, his constant squinting and dancing back and forth over the line of good taste to become one of the preeminent comedians of his generation.
Matthew Laurence (1980-1981)
It might suck for Gilbert Gottfried to be known as a member of one of the worst seasons of SNL ever, but at least he was part of the main cast. Matthew Laurence was only a featured player for the strike-shortened season.
Like Gottfried, Laurence was part of the Doumanian cast and didn’t survive the mass firing at the end of it. However, he bounced back quickly, as he appeared in supporting roles in Eddie and the Cruisers and Streets of Fire after leaving SNL.
Laurence might be best known for being the male lead in Duet, one of the first programs aired by the new Fox network in 1987.
Laurie Metcalf (1981)
Being a featured player on the worst season of SNL was bad, but at least Laurence had a full season. Laurie Metcalf only got two episodes during that cursed season.
Granted, her first episode was after Dick Ebersol took over for Doumanian mid-season, and it only lasted two episodes because of the 1981 Writer’s Strike. But regardless, she only got one Weekend Update appearance before she too fell victim to the purge.
This could be Saturday Night Live’s biggest whiff. As you may know, Metcalf went on to join the cast of Roseanne playing Roseanne’s sister, Jackie. It would be a role that would win Metcalf three consecutive Emmys out of four nominations. She would get her fourth Emmy in 2022 for her guest appearance on Hacks. In addition, she garnered an Oscar nomination for her work in Lady Bird and won two Tony awards as well. Not bad for someone fired after two episodes.
Damon Wayans (1985-1986)
Let’s jump ahead so you don’t think we are going to feature the entire Doumanian cast on this list. And, in another change, we’ll cover a cast member who wasn’t let go in a changing of the guard, but because of something they did.
One of Lorne Michaels’ pet peeves is when cast members go into business for themselves. He wants them to perform the sketches as written and as rehearsed. He doesn’t like ad-libs and doesn’t like changing things on your own.
Eleven shows into his tenure on the show, Damon Wayans decided to portray a cop character he was cast for as a flamboyant gay character instead a straight character as it was written. It got him more laughs, but it also ended up getting him fired.
This might have been self-sabotage because Wayans said he wanted to be fired because his lack of creative control or airtime on the show. It all worked out for the best, because four years later he became the breakout star of his brother’s In Living Color which led him to have a successful career in films such as Mo’ Money, The Last Boy Scout and Major Payne.
Ben Stiller (1989)
Ben Stiller only lasted a month at SNL, but he left not because of something he did, but because of something he was not allowed to do.
In 1987, Stiller, then 23, had made a short parody film aping The Color of Money starring himself as the Tom Cruise character (Frasier‘s John Mahoney played the Paul Newman character). He forwarded the film on to then-SNL cast member Jon Lovitz to pass along to Lorne Michaels as an audition to do short comedy films like the kind Albert Brooks made during the early days of the show.
Michaels was interested in Stiller but as a cast member, not as a filmmaker. He hired Stiller on as a featured performer. However, Stiller was totally uncomfortable with performing live, and only lasted four episodes before he quit the show. He would go onto make the filmed comedy he preferred on The Ben Stiller Show, first on MTV then on FOX, where he won an Emmy for his writing. That led to a career in movies, with films such as Reality Bites, There’s Something About Mary, Mystery Men, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story and Tropic Thunder. He would later return to host SNL.
Sarah Silverman (1993-1994)
It’s always hard for new people to get sketches on the air at SNL. It even harder if you were a woman with a unique comedic voice. This is what doomed Sarah Silverman’s tenure on SNL.
Silverman was only 22 when she started on the show. As a writer, only one of her sketches made it to dress rehearsal and none made it on the air. As a performer, she never made it past smaller supporting roles. She was fired after one season.
Silverman says that her firing toughened her up for the rest of her career. That’s a good thing, because Silverman would go on to be one of the most interesting voices in stand-up comedy. And her stand-up career led her to get her own Comedy Central TV show and notable appearances in TV shows and movies.
Rob Riggle (2004-2005)
Rob Riggle must have found negotiating the treacherous terrain at SNL relatively easy compared to his time as a highly decorated member of the United States Marine Corp, but still he only lasted one year at the show before seeking greener pastures.
Those pastures lay at Comedy Central where Riggle joined the cast of The Daily Show as their “military correspondent”.
Riggle stayed with The Daily Show for two years. He then went on to have roles in TV shows such as The Office and Modern Family and films like The Hangover and Step Brothers. He also was the prognosticator on FOX NFL Sunday from 2012 to 2019.
Casey Wilson (2008-2009)
When Casey Wilson joined the cast of SNL in 2008, she was the first new cast member hired in two years, and she was the only person to join the cast. And her tenure of one and a half years before being fired is more than most of the other people on this list received.
Wilson admitted that she wasn’t a good fit for SNL at the time. She found a much better fit in Happy Endings. She was nominated twice for “Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series” at the Critics’ Choice Television Awards for her work on the series. She has since starred in comedies such as Showtime’s Black Monday, Apple TV’s The Shrink Next Door, Hulu’s The Hotwives and Marry Me on NBC.
Jenny Slate (2009-2010)
The one thing Lorne Michaels hates more than cast members ad-libbing is when they drop the F-bomb live on air. And that is what happened to Jenny Slate during her very first episode.
The slip of the tongue—see meant to say “freakin’”—put a lot of attention on Slate. But all parties deny that the obscenity cost her SNL job. However, she was gone after her first year.
Slate has gone on to do quality work in a variety of genres. In 2010, she co-created Marcel, the Shell with Shoes On, the award-winning series of shorts that moved on to becoming a full-length film in 2021. She also won the Critic Choice Award for Best Actress for her performance in Obvious Child. And, while it might seem to pale in comparison to her other accomplishments, she was brilliant as Mona-Lisa Saperstein on Parks and Recreation.
Tim Robinson (2012-2013)
Tim Robinson might have only lasted a year on Saturday Night Live, but he at least created a memorable character–Gary, the elderly coworker that Cecily Strong and Bobby Moynihan made fun of in their recurring sketches. And even though he is the most recent cast member to leave SNL after one season, he made one of the biggest splashes in his post-SNL career.
His first big project after SNL was co-creating Detroiters with his fellow Michigander Sam Richardson. The series ran for two seasons on Comedy Central.
Robinson then went on to create I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson for Netflix. The show and Robinson won numerous awards over its three seasons, including Robinson winning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Actor in a Short Form Comedy or Drama Series in 2022 and 2023 for his work on the show.
