Saturday Night Live has a history of welcoming back former cast members as hosts. Since 1978 — when Chevy Chase became the first cast member to host — 32 former SNL cast members have returned, with Bill Hader the latest addition.
This season alone, three of the first five episodes will be hosted by former cast members, and with it being the 40th season, others are sure to host before the season finale. Of all of the likely candidates there is one former cast member who has never hosted: Adam Sandler.
To date Sandler’s films have earned over $3 billion, which gives him the sixth highest box office for SNL alumni, according to Business Week. His first two comedy albums (They’re All Gonna Laugh at You and What the Hell Happened to Me?) have both sold over two million copies, he’s won numerous MTV Movie Awards, and was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance in Punch-Drunk Love.
Almost 20 years after his departure from SNL in 1995, Sandler has never returned to Studio 8H, not even for a cameo. Clearly, he has the resume and the fan base to garner a hosting gig, but it appears he’ll never host.
In May, Sandler was a guest on former cast member Norm MacDonald’s podcast. MacDonald asked him about hosting and Sandler responded, “Why should I? I don’t know how good it would be. I’m slow now.” It seems odd that someone who has won three Worst Actor awards from the Razzies and currently holds numerous ratings under 25% from Rotten Tomatoes would be worried about being “good.”
The year 1995 was a pivotal one for Sandler, and looking at a couple of landmarks in his career may give us some insight on his decision not to host SNL.
Don Ohlmeyer was the West Coast president of NBC, and he decided to start giving notes to SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels about the direction of the show in the early 1990’s. The show was in the middle of a renaissance with cast members like Phil Hartman and Dana Carvey, but after those stars began leaving, ratings fell and critics started wondering if the show should be cancelled.
One of Ohlmeyer’s “notes” was to fire Chris Farley and Sandler, who had both been on the show for several seasons and therefore were expensive to keep on the show. Ohlmeyer was one of several NBC executives who didn’t “get” Sandler and thought the show would be better without him. In 1995, after the end of the 20th season, both Sandler and Farley were fired. Being fired from your job is one reason to not want to return to it, even for a week, so this could be reason enough for Sandler not to host.
In early 1995, Farley and Sandler had been the stars of two modest hits, Tommy Boy and Billy Madison, with both films opening No. 1 at the box office. Even with being fired from SNL that summer, both appeared to be on the right track career-wise, but they reached that point in different ways.
In the great SNL oral history book, Live From New York by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales, David Spade and Sandler recalled how Lorne Michaels had a hand in each film.
First, Spade:
“Chris and I always had a real good time together. Tommy Boy was Lorne’s idea to make something based on how we are in real life, how we fight, how we laugh, and how we act. So we tried to make a movie to reflect a little of that; it was great.”
Now, Sandler:
“[SNL writer Tim] Herlihy and I wrote a movie, Billy Madison, and we said, “This could be pretty funny, maybe we could do this.” And we showed it to Lorne, and he read it and told me, ‘There’s some funny stuff” but that maybe this shouldn’t be my first vehicle. And I remember saying, ‘Oh, okay, all right, I guess I’ll write something else.’ I didn’t have my feelings hurt at all. I just thought that’s okay that’s how he feels, and he picks what skits to do also. If I write a skit and it doesn’t get on the show, I don’t sit and cry about it, I just say I’ll write another one next week. So that’s how I felt about Billy Madison. I said, ‘Okay, Herlihy, he doesn’t like this one. Let’s write another one.”
We could take Sandler at his word, and assume his feelings weren’t hurt after Michaels’ rejection, but Billy Madison was still produced. Universal Pictures and producer Robert Simonds (who produced Sandler in Airheads) bought the screenplay, and Billy Madison ended up making $26 million at the box office, starting Sandler’s movie career.
Reading those two quotes also makes it seem like Michaels felt that the bigger star at the time was Farley, and he was probably right. Farley was the top star at SNL during his final two seasons, and Michaels was able to produce both Tommy Boy and Black Sheep before Farley’s death in 1997.
Michaels’ decision to go with Farley instead of Sandler, and then Michaels firing Sandler after the 20th season could have been enough for Sandler to decide not to work with Michaels again. Sandler followed the success of Billy Madison with a string of box office hits including Happy Gilmore, The Waterboy, and The Wedding Singer, and started his own production company, Happy Madison, in 1999. Lorne Michaels has never produced a film starring Adam Sandler.
Whether it’s the fact that Sandler thinks he wouldn’t be funny or some lingering animosity towards Michaels, it doesn’t appear that Sandler will be returning to SNL any time in the near future. Also, the real reason he continues to stay away from SNL may continue being a secret known only to Sandler.
His most recent movies, Men, Women & Children and The Cobbler, have been met with some harsh reviews and his next comedy, Pixels, won’t be released until July of next year, which makes it even less likely he’ll return during SNL‘s historic 40th season. All hope is not lost though, as Sandler may appear during SNL’s 40th anniversary special slated for February 2015. If he decides not to appear, we may finally know that there is more to it than what he told MacDonald in May.
