John Belushi Secretly Helped ‘SNL’ Cast After He Left the Show
“I have my personal conspiracy theory, which is that whoever came in after Lorne (Michaels) and the original cast was going to be killed,” says Saturday Night Live writer Pam Norris in SNL oral history Live From New York. “Because, you know, you can’t replace the Beatles.”
But replacing the Beatles of comedy was the daunting job facing Joe Piscopo, Eddie Murphy and the rest of the Season Six cast. Even though John Belushi, Gilda Radner and Bill Murray didn’t hit it out of the park every time, viewers remembered them that way. How could new cast members possibly measure up?
Because the original cast was so burnt out by the time they ended their run, you’d think guys like Belushi and Dan Aykroyd would stay far away from 30 Rock. But according to Joe Piscopo’s upcoming memoir, Average Joe, that wasn’t the case. In fact, the two stars started showing up at Studio 8H — not to host or grab cheap applause in cameo bits but simply to hang out with the struggling new comedians.
Don't Miss
“I’m really intimidated,” Piscopo tells me about the encounter. “Danny Aykroyd walks in? Belushi walks in? Belushi was a firebrand. He was a powerhouse. When he walked into a room, he freaking owned it. Belushi is like everything they say and more.”
No wonder Piscopo was intimidated. But Belushi was only looking for ways to help out the new guys. “Now I'm doing a sketch as Frank Sinatra. I had some people around me, like a bodyguard. And Belushi goes, ‘Hold on, hold on’ as we’re rehearsing. Belushi stops everything and starts orchestrating and directing the sketch! Oh my God, it was great.”
Belushi’s impromptu direction was “to help us, never to show us up or put on airs,” Piscopo explains. “Never.”
After a Season Six show ended one night, Belushi and Aykroyd invited the new kids to their hole-in-the-wall blues bar in Greenwich Village to hang out with the original cast. “I’m there, and I’m just thinking, ‘Wow! This is amazing!’” remembers Piscopo. “But I’m also a bit scared out of my mind. Gilda Radner is there. All the SNL icons and lots of famous people are there, as well as the more ordinary people like me. I’m just trying to keep to myself and not be a dork.”
Belushi didn’t allow Piscopo to keep to himself for long, inviting him to the jukebox. A few quarters later, it began to play Sinatra’s “New York, New York.” The two comics started spreading the news, trading lyrics as Piscopo thought, “This is unbelievable.”
“We’re just enjoying the song together,” he tells me. “Neither of us performing for anyone. We’re not trying to be funny for a paycheck or the laugh of the crowd. It’s just John and me off in the corner.”
For a few moments anyway. The singing caught the crowd’s attention, and no one wanted to miss Belushi doing something hilarious. As the people closed in, “John gets so uncomfortable that he just fades out of the scene,” says Piscopo, “his smile replaced by a look that tells me this kind of thing always happens to him.”
Piscopo felt badly for Belushi, but he still treasures the memory of their unguarded duet. “That was the wildest thing,” Piscopo says, “that I really ever experienced.”
