Even the funniest people can flop: just askJulia Louis-Dreyfusabout herSaturday Night Liveaudition. The Emmy-winning multi-hyphenate divulged details of her “excruciating” audition for Lorne Michaels' long-running sketch show on her podcastWiser Than Me, as first reported byVariety.
In conversation with fellowSNLalumnus Catherine O’Hara, Louis-Dreyfus recalled her audition nightmare in great detail, explaining that, “sketches that had killed in Chicago died a terrible, terrible death that day. It was excruciating.”
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“We never had a chance,” she added.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus Did Not Feel the Love at 30 Rock
Louis-Dreyfus was 21 when she joined the cast ofSaturday Night Livein 1982, where she stayed for three seasons. She was the youngest cast member the show had during her time on the NBC program. But it was not an easy transition. “When I was just getting started, I was part of the Practical Theater company in Chicago,” she explained. “The producers ofSNLcame to see the show and they loved it, and hired all of us to come to New York and be a part of [it].”
However, the love did not translate to the rest of theSNLcrew. When Louis-Dreyfus and her theater company traveled to New York City, they were forced to perform the first act of their comedy show for the cast and writers. “Under fluorescent lights in the middle of the day in front of 20 very cynical, unfriendly SNL cast members and writers,” Louis-Dreyfus explained, the trio of “complete and total unknowns” totally bombed.
“[They] already hated us because a bunch of their best friends had just been fired to make room for us,” she added, before noting “that humiliation influenced our whole SNL experience for the next couple of years, to tell you the truth.”
“I’ve learned a lot since that cringe-y day in a carpeted office on the 17th floor of 30 Rock,” Louis-Dreyfus quipped. Thankfully, the dynamics at play in the audition room didn’t leave too lasting an impact on the woman that would go on to becomeSeinfeld’s Elaine Benes andVeep’s titular Selina Meyer (andso much more). But it just goes to show you that sometimes, even the most talented and beloved people out there can have a bad day or two—especially when you’re coming into an environment as tight-knit asSaturday Night Live.
Duringan interviewwith Stephen Colbert at the 2019 fundraiser for Montclair Film, Louis-Dreyfus called her time onSNLa “pretty brutal time but a very informative time,” before adding that the tumult taught her that she “wasn’t going to do anymore of this show business crap unless it was fun.”
“I don’t have to walk and crawl through this kind of nasty glass if it’s not ultimately going to be fulfilling,” she said. “So that’s how I sort of moved forward from that moment. I sort of applied the fun-meter to every job since, and that has been very helpful.”
Saturday Night Live
The longest-running sketch-comedy/satire show on television, premiering in 1975, Saturday Night Live is a weekly series that features new hosts for each episode, with a core cast of actors and comedians that rotate over time. Episodes feature several skits that are sometimes ad-libbed on the fly, with the hosts engaging in most of them, and also provide musical guest performances that cap off each night.
