5 Multi-Time ‘SNL’ Hosts Who Will Never Get Asked Back
If you’re asked to host Saturday Night Live, that might just mean you’ve got a movie to promote or you’re inexplicably in the news. But if you get asked back, especially multiple times? Congratulations — that means you killed it!
But just as there’s a Five-Timers Club at SNL for celebs who’ve been asked back five times or more, there’s a more nefarious group of multi-time hosts who disgraced themselves out of any future chances to shout “Live from New York!”
This article not your thing? Try these...
Here are five people who used to be SNL royalty, but aren’t getting an invite to the 50th party…
Louis C.K.
Not-quite-Fiver-Timer C.K. hosted four times in the 2010s. But just months after his last appearance in April 2017, the New York Times published a story featuring allegations of sexual misconduct from five different women.
SNL never addressed C.K.’s indiscretions directly, but it’s pretty clear who host Tiffany Haddish was talking about in her monologue after the story broke. “Listen, fellas. Listen,” she said. “If you got your thing-thing out, and she’s got all her clothes on, you’re wrong. You’re in the wrong.”
Ashton Kutcher
Kutcher is another Four-Timer who’s gone missing from SNL in recent years. The hiatus coincides with his general withdrawal from show business, a sabbatical that likely results from the world concluding he’s not the greatest dude.
That judgment is based on video clips of Kutcher wishing 15-year-old Hilary Duff would hurry up and turn 18 already, slipping the tongue to 14-year-old Mila Kunis during an onscreen kiss to win a bet, wearing brown makeup and impersonating an Indian man for a Popchips commercial, and writing letters of support for convicted rapist Danny Masterson. If Kutcher’s own anti-child-sex-abuse charity doesn’t want him around, why would SNL?
James Franco
Yet another performer who is just one appearance away from the Five-Timers Club, Franco hasn’t shown his face on SNL since 2017. Why the long absence?
Chalk it up to his infamous stints “teaching” film classes at multiple schools. Franco has admitted he had sex with several of his students, leading to an assortment of lawsuits and accusations from former pupils. In 2021, he agreed to pay more than $2 million to settle sexual misconduct lawsuits. Forget SNL — even Seth Rogen won’t work with him now.
Tom Arnold
Arnold hosted SNL three times in the 1990s at the height of his Roseanne/True Lies popularity. But there was always a question of how funny Arnold actually was versus “I romanced Roseanne Barr and now I’m a celebrity too.”
Unlike other hosts on this list, Arnold’s unlikely return to SNL isn’t due to bad behavior as much as it is to a flatlining career. His biggest show-biz jobs in recent years include an episode of World’s Funniest Animals and two appearances on soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful as Captain Deuce Stevens.
Chevy Chase
Finally, a Five-Timer! Actually, Chase is an Eight-Timer, a number he’d already had in the books by 1997. Given that was more than 25 years ago, there’s a case that Chase could have been the show’s all-time leader if he’d only refrained from being such an asshole.
While Lorne Michaels hasn’t shared an official Banned From SNL list, everyone agrees Chase was added to it after that 1997 hosting gig. “I don’t know if he was on something, if he took too many back pills that day,” Will Ferrell remembered in oral history Live From New York. But Chase was on his worst behavior, suggesting that one of the show’s female writers give him a hand job. “I’ve never seen Lorne more embarrassed and red.”
Chase also yelled at people in the halls, then later claimed he was just goofing around. “We’d be like, ‘No, I don’t think you are,’” said Ferrell. If that wasn’t enough, Chase allegedly hit Cheri Oteri in the back of the head, once again under the guise of “joking.”
That’s why Ferrell named Chase as SNL’s worst host, adding, “I think you’ll find consensus on the Chevy Chase thing.”