The Brutal ‘SNL’ Sketch That Paris Hilton Refused to Do

Paris Hilton remains one of the least popular Saturday Night Live hosts of all time, at least among the show’s cast. Tina Fey went on a legendary rant about Hilton on Howard Stern, a tirade that doesn’t exactly reflect well on Fey either. “She’s a piece of shit,” Fey said. “People thought, ‘Ah, maybe she’ll be fun. You know, she won’t take herself too seriously.’ She took herself super seriously. She’s so dumb, and she’s so proud of how dumb she is. She looks like a tranny up close. Her hand is like from my elbow to the end of my hand.”

Yikes. Maya Rudolph wasn’t quite so cruel on Late Night with Seth Meyers but Hilton still came off terribly. “No one could really get Paris Hilton, our host, to engage in any personal conversations,” she remembered. “We realized she hadn’t asked any of us a personal question and (Meyers) said, ‘The first person she asks a personal question, I’ll give a hundred bucks.’” No one collected. 

Fey remembered that SNL scribe Jim Downey wrote a “really funny” sketch for Hilton that she refused to consider. “She was like, ‘Oh, I’m not doing it,’ and wouldn’t come out of her dressing room.”

Now we know what that sketch would have looked like, according to the biography Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live. It would have skewered Michaels’ scruples as much as Hilton’s sordid past, but it’s understandable why she passed.

The cold open would have started with Michaels confronting Hilton with a VHS cassette. “I just looked at it, and frankly, I’m still reeling,” he would have said. “It’s a sex tape, Paris. A sex tape, and you’re in it! Don’t bother to deny it, I know it’s you. I’ve watched it eight times, just to make sure.” 

Hilton can’t believe that Michaels had never heard of the tape — it was pretty famous. No matter. Based on Michaels’ discovery, Hilton would no longer be allowed to host the show. Michaels pointed to a plaque on the wall. “Do you see the phrase there? It’s Latin: Praeter Lucrum, Honor. Do you know what it means?” 

In what might be the sketch’s funniest line, Hilton knows what it means. “Of course,” she says. “‘Honor before profit.’” 

That’s the SNL motto, Michaels claims. “Paris, throughout its 30-year history, this show has had a watchword. That watchword is ‘excellence.’ If I were to let you walk out on that stage tonight, it might somehow create the impression, however erroneous, that the show was attempting, even if only in a slight way, to trade on, or exploit, or profit from, or milk, or cash in on the notoriety of that tape. In order, I suppose they would say, to get a rating. And if even only one person thought that, it would destroy everything this show has stood for.” 

While the sketch joke-shames Hilton for exploiting her sex life, Downey was slamming Michaels more than Hilton. This was the era when the show regularly booked scandal-prone starlets like Hilton and Lindsay Lohan to generate buzz among a new generation of fans. The cynical ploy was pretty transparent at the time and Downey was calling Michaels on it. 

Hilton performed the script at a table read before she put her foot down and refused to do it during the live show. That’s too bad because the sketch had a hilarious kicker, again at Michaels’ expense rather than Hilton’s. It would have ended with Hilton leaving the scene and an assistant notifying Michaels that he had a visitor. “Mr. Buttafuoco’s here.” 

Tabloid mainstay Joey Buttafuoco — the real Joey Buttafuoco — would have entered to replace Hilton. “Joey, thanks for filling in,” Michaels would have told him. “You’re a lifesaver!” 

Buttafuoco’s would-be reply: “Hey! Fuggetaboutit. Lorne’s got a problem, Joey Buttafuoco’s got his back.”