Adrien Brody’s performance on SNL was so bad that viewers thought he was banned

As far as bad Saturday Night Live hosts go, Adrien Brody is definitely up there. Was he as terrible at work as Steven Seagal? I guess not, but that’s just because the bar is in hell. Although he said he would love to host again, Brody seemed to kill any chance of that when he went off script and did an extended impression of a guy from Jamaica, complete with dreadlocks. Even by 2003 standards, this part of Brody was considered awkward at best. He just had to introduce this week’s musical guest, a task that 99.9% of presenters do without complications; instead, he wouldn’t let the beats die.

I don’t know what’s worse: the fact that he did this bit from the start (see below) or the fact that he continued to do it for 40 seconds straight. This single clip sparked an internet rumor that continues to this day that Adrien Brody did it without the show’s permission, and that this is what led to him being banned from the series in the future.

It’s easy to see why this rumor spread: It allows “SNL” to refuse such a green light, it explains why Brody never returned to the show despite his continued fame, and it helps contribute to the growth of the Adrien Brody narrative. – the worst. In 2017, Brody received a lot of criticism for revealing that his big, aggressive on-stage kiss with Halle Berry at the 2003 Academy Awards was not planned at all; the controversy added even more credence to the idea that Brody would go off-script on “SNL,” much to the embarrassment and discomfort of the cast and crew.

In a latest profile for VultureBrody explained that he suggested the Jamaican beat to the writers, and the “SNL” crew approved it and bought him a costume for it. He said he had no problem doing it in a dress rehearsal before performing live, a claim supported by fans online who I remember going to that dress rehearsal and supported by the long-running That Week on SNL podcast, which also debunked it in 2021:

One of the most enduring myths surrounding SNL is that this moment was completely unplanned and Adrien Brody was banned from the show because of it. This is all completely untrue. Adrian did exactly the same thing at the dress rehearsal. As silly as it was, it had to happen. https://t.co/3FamROsDRE

— That Week In SNL (@ThatWeekInSNL) October 7, 2021

“I think Lorne wasn’t happy that I embellished a little bit, but they let me do it,” Brody told Vulture. Lorne Michaels is known to hate improv on the showsince it doesn’t really fit the demands of a live sketch, it’s easy to imagine Michaels holding a grudge against Brody, who drags out the beat a little longer than expected.

When asked about rumors that he was banned, Brody denied them, but added: “I’ve never been invited either (laughs). So I don’t know what to tell you.’ Speaking about his experience on “SNL,” Brody also mentioned that he came away with a ton of ideas for performances. “They were all literally blown away by my pitching,” he said. It’s entirely possible that this was another Steven Seagal-esque situation, in the sense that as bad as the sketches that aired may have seemed, we’d be more forgiving if we saw all the rejected proposals the writers managed to pull off.

Early in the next season of “SNL,” during an episode hosted by tennis player Andy Roddick, there was a meta sketch in which tennis legend/commentator John McEnroe analyzed how Roddick was doing as a host. When asked how Roddick could screw it up, McEnroe said he could still “pull an Adrien Brody and start babbling in a Jamaican accent for no reason.”

It was a joke reminiscent of what “SNL” will do with Elon Musk in 2021, throwing in a casual jab about how bad his outdoor episode of the Season 46 finale was, just two weeks after Musk took over as host. Considering how much “SNL” don’t seem to like Musk these daysit seems that badmouthing the previous host’s episode is something the show only does when they think the host was exceptionally bad. (Like Brody, I don’t think Musk will be hosting again anytime soon.)

The latest evidence that Brody might be unofficially banned was a 2010 episode. “Watch What Happens Live” when Andy Cohen asked “SNL” alum Tina Fey who she thought was the worst host during her time on the show. The video appears to have been removed from the Internet entirely, though you can still find some articles from the time describing what happened: Fey insisted she couldn’t answer Cohen’s question, but then reportedly said, “Adrien Brody » audience.

Fey also described Brody as a bad host in a 2006 interview with Howard Stern; The audio of that interview also appears to have been scrubbed from the Internet, but it was mentioned in Steven Trapano’s 2013 book Saturday Night Live: Everything You Need to Know About Television’s Longest-Running Comedy (which you can purchase here), as well as summarized on one of Howard Stern’s fan sites. It seems that in 2006, Tina Fey mentioned that Brody had too many bad sketch ideas and suggested that he may have been angry that many of them were rejected by the writers. While the rumor that Brody was banned from “SNL” has yet to be proven, it’s very easy to see how it spread.