Dane Cook Mistakenly Believes He Hosted Back-to-Back Episodes of ‘SNL’

David Spade was gobsmacked when Dane Cook told him the news this week on the Fly on the Wall podcast. Cook confessed that he didn’t remember the exact details, but someone told him that he more or less hosted back-to-back episodes of Saturday Night Live. “It was like the end of one season, and I think I’m back-to-back host because I opened the next season,” he said. 

Or perhaps there was one Cook-free episode in between? “Maybe it was one,” he conceded. “It was like within three episodes, I hosted twice.” 

“Shit,” exclaimed Spade. “Get more famous. My God!”

Hosting (or nearly hosting) back-to-back episodes is one hell of an accomplishment. The only problem is, Cook didn’t come close to it. You’d think a comedian would remember something like this, but Cook’s two SNL hosting stints came nearly a year apart — first on December 3, 2005, then again on September 30, 2006. Still pretty fast, but the gap between host assignments only places Cook in a tie for 16th on the all-time list. 

Shame on Spade and Dana Carvey for just accepting the assertion as fact, but Cook remains justly proud of being asked to SNL twice — especially after the bench incident.

What’s the bench incident? “By ‘98, everybody made it pretty clear to me: If you didn’t have a Saturday Night Live or an HBO Young Comedian Special, if you didn’t have one of those two things, you weren’t gonna zeitgeist. You weren’t invited to the party.”

Good news for Cook: SNL wanted him to audition as a possible replacement for Spade’s buddy Adam Sandler. “They were looking at me,” he explained. “They were coming down to see me in the Village. I was just doing gigs down there, going back and forth from Boston.”

It could have been the opportunity that would make Cook zeitgeist, to use his parlance. But “on my way to my audition at SNL, I had a full-on panic attack,” he said. “I sat on a bench outside of Rockefeller Plaza, and I didn’t go in. I actually called my manager. I said I can’t do it. And he is like, ‘Why? They’re all waiting for you. They want to see you. They’re looking for something to fill that void.’”

But Cook wasn’t the comedian to plug that Sandler-sized hole, at least not in 1998. He knew from comedy friends that working on the show could be confrontational, “and I was very beta at that time,” he confessed. “I was like, I’m not going to be able to fight for skits. I can barely get my food order out for a waiter at lunch. I’m not going to be able to survive at SNL.” 

His managers weren’t happy, and Cook wasn’t happy with himself either. While doing D-level gigs in Tampa, he watched Jimmy Fallon on SNL in the place he could have been. He was on the stand-up circuit with up-and-comers like Dave Chappelle and Tracy Morgan, “but I felt like everybody else had a trajectory,” he said. “And every time I walked by that bench at Rockefeller Plaza, I was like, I’m an asshole. I can’t believe I screwed it.” 

Thank goodness Cook had those back-to-back SNL hosting gigs to rebuild his confidence.