Throughout Saturday Night Live’s more than 45 years on the air, the show has featured more than 150 different cast members. Considering all of the pressure that comes with starring in a live sketch comedy show that is produced in only a week, it is staggering that so many of those actors have done a good job on the show. Despite that, actors like Eddie Murphy, Tina Fey, Phil Hartman, Kate McKinnon, Bill Hader, Kenan Thompson, and Andy Samberg managed to be hilarious on the show week in and week out.
Even though several SNL stars used the show as a springboard to fame and fortune, some of the show’s cast members flopped on the series. Of course, given the fact that so many cast members have come and gone, it makes sense that a lot of the show’s fans may have trouble deciding which SNL star was the worst. Amazingly enough, however, a group of fans on Reddit decided that Saturday Night Live’s worst cast member is an actor who appeared on the show for many years.
The Worst Cast Member
As anyone who has been on the internet for more than five minutes should be able to attest, virtually every topic gets debated to death online. With that in mind, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that a lot of different websites have posted their own lists of the worst Saturday Night Live cast members and opinions can vary.
In 2018, a Reddit user posted a thread on r/AskReddit looking for opinions on who the worst Saturday Night Live cast member of all time is. Unsurprisingly, the people who responded to that post offered up a lot of different options for their fellow users to consider and some of them got a lot of votes. The thing that is likely to shock a lot of people, however, is that the response with the most upvotes reads “Jimmy Fallon. I mean... he's okay now. But as a comedic ACTOR he was and is absolutely s**t.”
Other Options
Even though the people who voted on the aforementioned Reddit thread named Jimmy Fallon the worst SNL cast member of all time, several of the show’s other stars were called out as well. Amazingly enough, a lot of the other cast members that were among Saturday Night Live’s worst cast members are also very famous according to that thread.
The second highest-voted response to the thread named several SNL cast members who were described as playing into the “goofy manchild” archetype. The response then goes on to list Adam Sandler, Jimmy Fallon, Andy Samberg, and Pete Davidson as examples of those actors. On top of this entry proving that the people who voted on this thread really couldn’t stand Fallon, it is amazing to see people like Sandler and Samberg included.
In the Reddit responses that followed, several more Saturday Night Live cast members were named as being among the show’s worst. For example, Leslie Jones, Robert Downey Jr., Chris Kattan, Victoria Jackson, Gilbert Gottfried, Colin Jost, Michael Che, Rob Schneider, Horatio Sanz, and Jim Bruer all got a lot of votes.
Fallon Explains
Considering that Jimmy Fallon starred in Saturday Night Live from 1998 until 2004, Lorne Michaels clearly didn’t think he was the worst cast member of all time. However, looking at the aforementioned Reddit thread about the worst SNL stars, it quickly becomes clear why Fallon’s SNL tenure bothered some fans so much. After all, one of the top comments brought up Fallon ruining so many SNL sketches by laughing.
“I hated him when he was on the show. When he came back for their big anniversary show, he owned up to it and made fun of himself for ruining so many sketches with his laughing. I gotta give him some credit for that at least.”
Of course, there is a really good reason why Jimmy Fallon’s Saturday Night Live tenure is best remembered for him laughing mid-sketch. After all, Fallon really did break character on SNL so often that it got pretty ridiculous. In fact, Fallon even broke out laughing during one of the most beloved SNL sketches of all time even though Jimmy only had a single line in the sequence.
During a 2018 episode of The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon explained why he broke character during SNL’s famous cowbell sketch. "Will was hitting the cowbell, and his shirt was coming up, and I had, like, one line. And right before I was supposed to say my line, Chris said something like, 'What's wrong with you?' And he was just messing around with Will, and he knocked his glasses off. Then Will looked at me, and I saw the eyes of, like, a crazy person. Then I just started laughing and I totally broke. I had one line in the whole scene, and I just totally messed up my line."
Of course, it is perfectly understandable that a lot of Saturday Night Live fans are bothered by the fact that Jimmy Fallon broke character on the show so often. However, in all reality, there aren’t too many people who could have kept a straight face standing near Will Ferrell during the much-beloved cowbell sketch.