Will Ferrell Said ‘Saturday Night Live’ Had to Cut A Sketch From Shaq’s Cameo Because He Was Funnier Than This Host

Getting upstaged by Shaq on a comedy show as a comedy actor would be a hard one to swallow, even with an extra tall glass of sherry.

When NBA Hall-of-Famer Shaquille O’Neal crashed Saturday Night Live for a surprise appearance in 1998, SNL star Will Ferrell was understandably stoked about sharing the stage with a fellow comedy giant. As anyone who watches Inside the NBA can attest, the 7-foot-1 superstar isn’t just one of the greatest centers in basketball history — he’s also one of the most naturally hilarious people on television, and his booming laugh is enough to send any serious sports panel into worse hysterics than the average Bill Hader break.

Back in the late 1990s, though, Shaq was still only known to the average TV audience as a dominant physical force on the court and not as an intimidating comedic presence on stage — but when Cheers and Frasier star Kelsey Grammer hosted a very special episode of SNL on October 3, 1998, he learned his lesson about Shaq’s power quicker than the Big Diesel could teach it to Brad Miller.

In a recent appearance on New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce, Ferrell explained that Lorne Michaels cut one of Shaq’s killer sketches from the show out of fear that he would be so much funnier than Grammer that it would embarrass the host. It would take until the release of Money Plane for Michaels and everyone else to realize that Grammer is incapable of feeling any shame.

As Ferrell noted, that SNL episode was supposed to be all about Grammer, but, with the NBA in a lockout, Shaq expressed interest in appearing on the show while in the New York area, and no one dared turn him down. “They said, ‘Hey, Shaq’s in town. He wants to do some sketches,’” Ferrell said of the week’s surprise, saying simply of the all-star's performance, “He destroyed.”

“He was so funny and natural to the point where one of his sketches got cut because he had a funnier show than the host,” said Ferrell without naming Grammer in hopes of maintaining the sitcom star’s comedic dignity. As for the sketch itself, Ferrell still finds himself heartbroken at the cut, remembering, “We wrote this sketch where all the cast members were picking on me and making me cry. And Shaq came up, he’s like, ‘What’s going on?’ And I’m like, ‘Shaq, everyone’s making fun of me.’ And he’s like, ‘Come with me, Will.’”

“He picked me up in his arms, and we proceeded to sing a duet called ‘No One’s Gonna Hurt My Little Man.’ And Shaq was cradling me,” said the 6-foot-3 comedy superstar who found himself dwarfed by the Big Diesel, lamenting of the sketch, “That got cut, and it, like, destroyed.” 

Thankfully, we still have some surviving footage of the sketch, and, with all due respect to Grammer, I don’t think Mr. Tossed Salad and Scrambled Eggs had the physical, comedic or vocal capacity to simultaneously cradle Ferrell and hit those low notes like they’re jump hooks on the low post: