Which SNL player never got the chance he/she deserved?

Terry Sweeney, the gay one.

Laurie Metcalf was lucky to have been let go so quickly. She probably didn't think that at the time, but she went on to have a pretty good career, which is something that not lot of SNL female talents can say.

Terry Sweeney. Did great drag and had excellent timing but homophobia got his shitcanned.

Yeah poor Laure Metcalf WHET her. I'm kidding.

Catherine O'Hara never made it to the air. She walked out when she heard Michael McDonough go on a rant about how the show was a Viking death ship and he was going to take everyone down with it.

Smart move.

Mark McKinney never did much on the show.

Another vote for Terry Sweeney.

Danitra Vance.

Finesse Mitchell

Charles Rocket was on an infamously shitty season, but he had comic chops, looks, and talent. It's very sad that his life ended so young.

Rocket got a huge chance. He was practically Doumanian's pet and was the featured player in skit after skit. Even with the opportunity handed on a silver platter, it was Eddie Murphy who took his few moments and ran with it. Proof that great talent can shine even in only a few on air minutes.

Emily Prager was the only cast member billed to never actually appear in a show (she was supposed to be on the same episode as Laurie Metcalf).

Jay Mohr got almost nothing to do, and he is very funny and used to be very attractive.

That Daria girl who was in that Winona Ryder movie. Oh wait, she did get a chance, she just had no range other than Daria.

R14

Janeane Garofalo wasn't the voice of Daria. Unless, you're saying that she reminds of you Daria? If that's the case my apologies in advance for getting what you meant wrong.

Adam Sandler, Chevy Chase, Amy Poehler...

[quote]Jay Mohr got almost nothing to do, and he is very funny and used to be very attractive.

His book "Gasping for Airtime" is interesting — he comes off both as someone who didn't get much of a chance, but squandered the chances he did get.

Terry Sweeney was brilliant as Nancy Reagan!

With a number of very talented comediennes (Metcalf, Watkins, Wilson, etc.) who went nowhere on SNL, how would someone like Jane Curtin had fared if she hadn't been one of the initial cast members. Had she joined in the 80s, would she have made it?

[quote]Mark McKinney never did much on the show.

Yeah he never did much while awful Jim Breuer was given quite a bit of sketch time.

I think Melanie Hutsell probably could have done more than Jan Brady and the sorority sister, but they just weren't writing for women much during that time.

Her Paula Deen fucking slays me every time.

Melanie Hutsell had a decent run, but she deserved better.

Her costars in the "Delta Delta Delta" sketches, Beth Cahill and Siobhan O'Fallon, fared worse, but at least O'Fallon still works. She's on "Wayward Pines" and I think she's one of the producers.

And don't get me started on Ellen Cleghorne!

Nancy Walls who was too fucking hot to be on SNL. She wasn't the best cast member comedically but she was nice eye candy.She did OK for herself and is today, Mrs Steve Carrell.

I agree on Nancy Walls. Molly Shannon, Cheri Oteri, and Ana Gasteyer were loved by viewers and Walls wasn't. She is probably glad that she isn't Cheri Oteri right now.

At the end of Casey Wilson's season she did one HYSTERICAL skit about a paraplegic stripper. Very funny! At the time I remember wondering where the hell this lady had been all year long

Hot Rob Riggle never got much to do, but he's done pretty well post SNL.

Casey Wilson is really cute and talented. I don't think she's ever gotten her due. She was good in Happy Endings but it was too big of a cast for her to really be noticed.

Damon Wayans!

[quote]Casey Wilson is really cute and talented. I don't think she's ever gotten her due. She was good in Happy Endings but it was too big of a cast for her to really be noticed.

Casey was my favorite female cast member on Happy Endings. I just started watching The Hotwives of Las Vegas on Hulu. Casey shines on that show.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus was background furniture in almost every scene. Most women were severely overlooked except a precious few cases - until the late 90's.

SNL was never known to write well for African Americans but yet Murphy bucked the trend by his brilliance. Almost all SNL books suggest that when the chance comes to the performers, when/if they jump, they need to show something immediately. If they don't, the writers ignore them and they go to the back burner. Murphy had the worst writing ever on his first season of SNL (an accomplishment) but had the audiences applauding and screaming with his impressions. When the later writing teams came on, everyone wanted to write for him because he could turn any material into a great skit. Women might have never had it very good on SNL but AA's have had it even worse.

Damon Wayans, fired!

Jeff Richards was cute and funny but didn't get much more to do than Drunk Girl

At least we got very small roles in Bridesmaids.

Julia Louis-Dreyfuss was brilliant as a child named Darlene in a sketch with Lily Tomlin's Edith Ann character-unfortunately she was in blackface.

I never got my chance.

Louis-Dreyfus by her own admission didn't have a signature character that really made her stand out. She's somewhat right but I wasn't such a big fan of hers to be honest. She's been better on episodic TV though. I don't like Seinfeld wither but Ellie, Old Christine and VEEP seem to be more of her wheelhouse.

Robin Duke was on during the Eddie Murphy / Joe Piscopo seasons and always made me laugh.

Christine Ebersole was on for a season and obviously went on to better things. SNL probably wasn't a good fit for her but I can also imagine her working better in the Phil Hartmann-Dana Carvey-Jan Hooks era. She would have made an amazing Sweeney sister.

Harry Shearer actually got two different chances on the show but he's apparently so difficult to work with he quit both times. He's obviously very talented, though, and could have been a solid everyman cast member like Ackroyd, Hartmann and Hader.

I loved Ellen Cleghorne's Joycelyn Elders.

Jim Brewer

Saturday Night Live is a broken thing. It just doesn't work at a ratio of success/failure that most things do.

If they could have been they would have been, and that's show business baby.

Who is r5 talking about? The guy from the doobie brothers?

r5 was referring to Michael O'Donoghue, a writer and sometime performer in the early seasons of the show. When Dick Ebersol took over the show he hired O'Donoghue back as head writer. O'Donoghue had some radical ideas for the show (he wanted people to refer to him as Reich Marshall) and didn't hid his contempt for any of the cast or other personnel on the show.

[quote]O'Donoghue returned to SNL in 1981 when new executive producer Dick Ebersol needed an old hand to help revive the faltering series. O'Donoghue's volatile personality and mood swings made this difficult: His first day on the show he screamed at all the cast members, telling Mary Gross she was as talented as a pair of old shoes, and forcing everyone to write on the walls with magic markers. This horrified Catherine O'Hara so much that she quit before ever appearing on air. The only one he liked was Eddie Murphy, reportedly because Murphy wasn't afraid of him. According to the book Live From New York O'Donoghue tried to shake things up on that first day by saying "this is what the show lacks" and spray-painting the word "DANGER" on the wall of his office.

When O'Hara left she recommended Ebersol hire fellow Second City alum Robin Duke, who stayed with the show for several seasons..

Forgot the wikipedia link above:

Looks like he was a bootleg Hunter S Thompson

Casey Wilson

I agree with people mentioning Casey Wilson. It's still a shame that someone like her was canned quickly. Yet, years that awful Leslie Jones has been on for a few years.

Hey wasn't that Terry Sweeney on American Crime Versace the other day?

RD Jr was on the same season as Sweeney. Considering that we discovered eventually RD Jr is a great actor with a lot of range, I guess he never go much a chance on SNL. What was he doing there anyway? Was he a comedian? Was he just a delicious twink some executive wanted around?

[quote] RD Jr is a great actor with a lot of range. What was he doing there anyway?

He heard SNL had the most coke.

r43 Jim Breuer was a stoner who lasted way longer than he should've because he made the stand-ups on the show laugh off set. He's a much better storyteller than performer.

r51 Yes.

Surprised Larry David didn't do better as a writer. Maybe his humor wasn't a good "fit." Can't say he hasn't done ok.

I actually think his performance in the Howdy Doody joke on Fridays is hysterical even to this day. All you have to do to get me to crack up is do the "Hello Mr. Doody, right this way Mr. Doody...."

Some performers can't adjust to the show's crazy schedule, hypercompetitive atmosphere and its specific sketch comedy formula. Some of them end up flourishing elsewhere.

To say that Chris Rock flourished elsewhere is quite the understatement.

What’s the “crazy schedule” of SNL (behind the scenes), [R57]?

Do they do everything at night, or...

I thought Abby Elliott had potential. Her Angelina was great. They seemed to be prepping her for big things and then suddenly she was gone.

Larraine Newman was underrated. She was just as talented and versatile as Gilda and Jane, but she refused to do recurring characters. Gilda might not have emerged as the biggest female star from SNL had she only done Roseanne Roseannadanna once or Emily Litella or a number of he characters she created.

[quote]I thought Abby Elliott had potential. Her Angelina was great. They seemed to be prepping her for big things and then suddenly she was gone.

I liked her too. Her Zoey Deschanel impersonation was hilarious.

[quote]What’s the “crazy schedule” of SNL (behind the scenes), [[R57]]?

[quote]Do they do everything at night, or...

They write many of the sketches starting on Tuesday nights and into early Wednesday mornings. Then there is table read of all the sketches and it gets competitive as to what gets picked for the show. Rehearsals can be very long days and some of the pre-filmed sketches are filmed on crazy schedules. The pre-filmed sketch of Kellyanne Conway as the It clown had started filming on a Friday night and didn't wrap until Saturday morning of the show.

When Larry David was an SNL writer he disliked the crazy writing schedule. Past and even cast members have gone on record as saying the show was exhausting at times. Aidy Bryant said something last season about having a 20 hour work day for one pre-filmed sketches.

Jay Mohr's book Gasping for Airtime gives a lot of good insight into the craziness of SNL. He seemed a bit annoyed with the crazy writing schedule. He also mentioned how hosts are given veto power when it comes to sketches and sometimes a host uses that veto power at the last minute. Mohr mentioned how he wrote a sketch when Shannen Doherty was hosting where she played Sean Young. The sketch made it to dress rehearsal and Doherty asked that it not make to the broadcast show.

Terry Sweeney and Ellen Cleghorne get my vote, if we're voting.

It's amazing how many successful people generally flopped as cast members on SNL: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Chris Rock, Robert Downey Jr, Sarah Silverman, Janeane Garofalo, Joan Cusack, etc.

It's either they didn't fit into the mold of the show or there's something very broken at SNL for years. I vote the latter. They seem to be getting their shit together somewhat but they continue to have REALLY unfunny men like Kenan Thompson and Pete Davison on for YEARS - inexplicably.

Wish they would have some sort of public voting system instead of Lorne Michaels consistently running the show off the rails time and time again.

Kenan Thompson is funny but he has been on too long. Pete Davison was OK as the token kid but he's been on too long as well.

R40, he wishes!

Sorry, R48.

Damon Wayans was fired for suddenly on the air playing a supporting part of a cop (a walk-on, really) as an outrageous gay stereotype just to attract attention. He's a talented guy, but he was an incredible asshole and homophobe.

Kenan Thompson is kept on mostly because he's so beloved. Everyone who has worked with him says he's one of the warmest, kindest, most generous people in show biz.

Melanie Hutsell actually got a lot of airtime when she was on the show. She left some hilarious skits behind her that for years lorne Michaels would not release (she left on bad terms, apparently), but now they're on hulu: the many Jan Brady sketches (the best being the Battle of the bands between the Brady Bunch and the Partridge Family), "Tori! Tori! Tori!" starring Tori Spelling, and my favorite of all, the Very Special Episode of Blossom.

Michaels said she could only do one thing, which was to play obnoxious tortured ugly girls who mistakenly thought they were normal, but she was so GOOD at it. When they did parody of the Very Special Episode of Blossom aired and they showed her dancing all over the place in the credits, with a hideous prosthetic nose and chin, my boyfriend at the time and I were in absolute tears.

I really liked Melanie Hutsell. She had that one dumb soriority sister character and those sketches were pretty funny. When Hutsell joined SNL, her improv teammate Beth Cahill was hired along with her. Beth seemed to have potential. She was fired after one season.

[quote]Mark McKinney never did much on the show.

I think McKinney was overshadowed by Will Ferrell.

[quote]Kenan Thompson is funny but he has been on too long

I agree with this. I know he did try to leave SNL a few years back. Somehow Lorne Michaels stopped him from leaving.

[quote]Michaela Watkins was fired after one season, but she was better than many of the women who'd joined the cast.

I think being on during the Kristen Wiig era of SNL is what hurt Watkins.

Michaela Watkins owns this thread. She was awesome.

Her Angie Tempura (of bitchpleeeeze.com) still pops into my head, and she did the best Arianna Huffington of anyone.

And she only got, what, 13 episodes?

I hated the way Chris Parnell was treated on the show; Michaels fired him TWICE because he didn't think he was "funny enough" (and Jimmy Fallon *was*?).

Melanie Hutsell was hilarious. Lorne Michaels didn't like her.

Danitra Vance was the ONLY comic actor to make laugh AND cry in the 40+ years of SNL. That Black Girl was brilliant as well as Cabrini Green. I cried when she died

Danitra was so great. Cabrini Green, just wonderful.

She actually quit SNL at the end of the season, she wasn't fired — they were underusing her in too many Garrett Morris-style background parts, playing maids and waitresses. She spoofed it by singing a song called "I Played the Maids," to the tune of Barry Manilow's "I Write the Songs."

She and Lovitz would have been held over into the next cast, and she could have had more visibility in her too-short life.

[quote]Melanie Hutsell was hilarious. Lorne Michaels didn't like her.

Was it because of her weight?

Thank you r80, I enjoyed the clarification.

.

r79