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On live television, anything can happen. And when you’re a live comedy show going strong for the past 50 years, like Saturday Night Live, you’re bound to experience some outrageous, profane, and just plain rude behavior from celebrity hosts pushing the boundaries. In all the years SNL has invaded our weekends, a little over a dozen performers and guests have been barred from ever returning to the legendary studio, whether due to their attitude, their backstage antics, or an on-air stunt that left the show embarrassed. We’re looking at you, Adrian!
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0:01
On live television, anything can happen
0:04
And when you're a live comedy show going strong for the past 50 years, like Saturday Night Live
0:09
you're bound to experience some outrageous, profane, and just plain rude behavior from celebrity hosts pushing the boundaries
0:16
In all the years SNL has invaded our weekends, a little over a dozen performers and guests have been barred from ever returning to the legendary studio
0:25
whether due to their attitude, their backstage antics, or an on-air stunt that left the show embarrassed
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We're looking at you, Adrian. So? Today, we're checking the guest list to see all the hosts that have been banned from SNL
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We're Weird History, and you're not. Frank Zappa's 30-year-plus career as a musician was one established by improvisation, experimentation, and nonconformity
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conformity. His popularity throughout the 70s earned him a musical guest spot on a 1976 episode
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of Saturday Night Live, featuring Candace Berg and his host. Zappa's set went well enough that
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he was offered the host and musical guest spot for the October 21st, 1978 episode to showcase
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his comedy acting chops alongside his musical talents. Unfortunately for the production team
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the cast, and the viewing audience, Zappa's brown shoes didn't quite make it. The musician did not
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mesh well with the cast and crew during the week preceding that fateful Saturday. His deliveries
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were bland, his attitude was lax, and he made sure to inform the audience how blatantly he would be
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reading from the cue cards during the broadcast. By the end of the show, when everyone was saying
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their goodbyes, the rest of the cast refused to interact with Zappa, showing him just what they
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thought of his performance. He was banned from SNL after his episode and was never invited back by
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the time of his death in 1993. So while Zappa may have been buried, that particular hatchet never was
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These days, it's relatively common to watch a television show where cast members are voted off
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But before American Idol, Survivor, or RuPaul's Drag Race, there was Andy. The iconoclastic
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comedian Andy Kaufman was no stranger to SNL and could even be described as a semi-regular
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For example, his trademark performance lip-syncing to the Mighty Mouse theme song was a bit he did on the show
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However, Kaufman was banned from SNL on November 20, 1982, not by Lorne Michaels this time, but by a fan vote
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Whether NBC was tired of receiving complaint mail about the quirky funny man or Kaufman himself thought it was a good gag NBC provided a 1 number to vote on whether Kaufman should remain on the show
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The Dump Andy phone number received a whopping 169,000 votes to keep Kaufman on Saturday nights
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But 195,500 voices on the other side were louder, and Kaufman never returned
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to the Saturday Night Live stage again. Now, that is commitment to the bit
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As far as breakout SNL stars go, Chevy Chase was the OG
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Groomed for stardom from the first show of the series, Chase became wildly popular with fans and viewers
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while remaining less than popular with the rest of the cast, producers, and Lorne Michaels
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Basically, Chevy seemed to rub anyone involved in the show the wrong way
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The titular star of the short-lived Chevy Chase show had returned to host SNL a whopping eight times
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since his departure halfway through season two. but Chase remained difficult to work with
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butting heads with the cast and writers. And it finally came to a head on February 15th, 1997
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when the producers had enough and issued Chase a soft ban from the show
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While he hasn't been offered a hosting gig in almost 30 years, he has been back a handful of times
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to crash the Weekend Update desk. If you're looking for a legendary actor
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to book on your late-night sketch comedy television show, you can't do much better than Milton Berle
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The trailblazing comedian and actor boasted a career spanning over eight decades
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garnering the prestigious nickname Mr. Television. Burrell hosting SNL seemed like a slam dunk
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However, in addition to his legendary career, Milton Burrell also had a legendary ego
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Allegedly, his sense of self-importance spilled over into the April 14, 1979 episode of Saturday Night Live
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where Burrell took control of the whole show. Upstaging cast members, hogging the camera, and singing an off-script, unsanctioned song
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were just some of the behaviors the crew and audience had to endure for 90 minutes
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By the end of the show, described by writer Rosie Shuster as a comedy train accident in
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slow motion on a loop, Burl was officially banned from ever hosting again
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He did show up at a rat video, though. Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman star Louise Lasser holds the distinction of being the first person
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ever banned from Saturday Night Live, and probably is a person many of you
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have never heard of. Well her antics on SNL may be to blame because the penultimate episode of the show first season would turn out to be one of its most infamous In the spring of 1976 Lasser had been arrested
5:06
for possession of illegal drugs, a fact which may have contributed to her bizarre behavior
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exhibited on SNL's July 24, 1976 episode. She was nearly incoherent during her hosting endeavor
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and refused to work with the writing staff. What made it on TV was bad enough
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but behind the scenes, it was much worse. Lasser was allegedly found crawling through the SNL offices looking for any drugs she could find
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The litany of issues experienced during Lasser's episode earned her a permanent ban from future shows
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Robert Blake has been called a lot of things. Actor, soldier, accused murderer, and perhaps most humiliating of all, bad SNL host
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Decades before he was a suspect in his wife's death, Blake was a seasoned television and film actor
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who got his start as a child in the Our Gang series of shorts from the 1930s and 40s
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And he wanted everyone to know he was a big shot. He allegedly butted heads with the cast, producers, and writers
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even going as far as to throw his script into the face of writer and cast member Gary Kroger
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The Little Rascal's issues with the writing, paired with his behavior towards the rest of the team
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and earned him a place in the one-timers club of SNL hosts
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No puffy lounge coat comes with that distinction. Adrian Brody's May 10, 2003 episode of Saturday Night Live
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came after a rough week for the writing staff. Allegedly, Brody had been scrapping good sketch ideas all week
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and was generally a thorn in the side of the performers. But aside from his behind-the-scenes antics
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it was what Brody did during the live taping that earned him a spot on Lauren's naughty list
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While introducing musical guest Jamaican performer Sean Paul, Brody took it upon himself to debut his Rasta Man character to the world
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Dressed in dreadlocks and speaking in a pretty bad accent that could most charitably be described as blackface without the makeup
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the recent Oscar winner drew dirty looks and a permanent fan from Lorne Michaels, who is not the least bit amused with the bit
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Action star and alleged martial artist, Steven Seagal, was slated to host the April 20, 1991 episode
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of Saturday Night Live with musical guest Michael Bolton. A veritable who's who of early 90s stars
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the show should have been a smash hit. But nobody was more detrimental to the cause than Seagal himself Right from the get go Seagal was tough to work with not playing well with the cast and crew and pitching truly awful sketch ideas
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including one in which Seagal would sexually assault cast member Victoria Jackson. This
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apparently angered Michaels, who almost axed the under siege actor in favor of a hostless episode
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later calling Seagal the biggest jerk to ever be on the show. The lawman was never invited back to
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this show, and a cursory glance at his comedic chops will prove why this was a smart move
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Meanwhile, Michael Bolton was invited back to sing about Captain Jack Sparrow
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making Steven Seagal the only host to be less funny than the musical guest
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Martin Lawrence was already an established comedian and actor when he was asked to host
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Saturday Night Live on February 19, 1994. Lawrence had kicked off his popular eponymous sitcom the
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year before, and his comedy star was on the rise. However, Lawrence thought SNL was the perfect place
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to push very network television unfriendly boundaries. During his monologue, Lawrence tested the patience of the censors, producers, and women around the globe when he went on an
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impassioned rant about feminine hygiene habits and the racial makeup of the in-studio audience
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while a general air of unpleasantness wafted through the crowd. After ad-libbing several jokes
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one of the worst rules you could break in the eyes of Lorne Michaels. Lawrence was banned from the series
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and all repeats of the monologue were edited for content with a cheeky title card and voiceover explaining
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what the audience wasn't about to see. Eh, what you gonna do
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Actor and talk show host Charles Grodin managed to annoy a lot of people
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both on and off stage, during his hosting gig on the October 29th, 1977
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episode of Saturday Night Live. The famously dry and acerbic comedian ad-libbed much of his performance that evening
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which was already a big no-no where Lorne Michaels was concerned. Because nothing makes a producer of live television more nervous than someone going off script
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This led many to describe his performance as feeling like he had missed the rehearsals
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even breaking character and stopping mid-sketch to correct his fellow performers at one point
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To be fair to Grodin, this aloof, cynical attitude was his entire shtick
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but his unwillingness to deviate from it to become part of the SNL ensemble was impossible to ignore
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Grodin's behavior was a debacle for everyone involved in the show, especially Lorne Michaels, who banned the Midnight Run star from ever appearing again