Groundlings Will Ferrell, Cheri Oteri, and later Chris Kattan all got on in 1995. Coolidge, from the same Groundlings group, didn’t. She said she would have self-destructed had she been cast. But we’re not so sure about that. It seems that the Saturday Night Live format would have been an excellent place for Coolidge to shine.
Far from falling flat, Coolidge went on to appear in a slew of TV and film projects, including joining the cast of Christopher Guest’s awesome spoof documentaries A Mighty Wind and For Your Consideration as well as Legally Blonde and American Pie. Stifler’s mom would have been hilarious on Saturday Night Live, but Coolidge says that, given all of the politics on SNL, she feels like she dodged a bullet.
The other half of Kenan & Kel on Nickelodeon, Kel Mitchell, didn’t make it to Saturday Night Live after his 2003 audition. Although it sucks to be left behind, Mitchell has, since his partnership with Thompson, worked as both a TV actor and a voice actor.
Reno 911!’s Kenney will tell you one thing: there is nothing more dreadful than auditioning for Saturday Night Live. In fact, Kenney has used her audition experience as a measuring stick throughout her entire career for just how awful something is going to be. She described her experience saying, “It was terrifying. I believe they must do it that way on purpose because since then I’ve never had an audition so terrifying. Sit and wait, cold room. I got no laughs and, at the time, I thought, ‘Wow, if you want to be in this business, this is what it’s gonna be every time.’ Thank god it’s never like that.” And apparently it hasn’t been, because Kenney has worked quite a lot since being terrorized in a comedy basement at Studio 8H.
Saturday Night Live’s loss is Silicon Valley, Portlandia, and Franklin & Bash’s gain. Nanjiani auditioned in 2012 and even though SNL producers knew him from the Lorne Michaels-produced Portlandia, Nanjiani wasn’t really a character kind of guy. He did his standup act but didn’t get an offer to join the cast. He was glad for the experience, though, saying, “I mean, you can’t not audition for SNL.”
Scheer auditioned in 2001 and again in 2002, after being scouted out of the Upright Citizens Brigade. He said that he flubbed his audition. “I did Jeff Goldblum returning a shirt, just dumb characters that I thought were really good at the time, but I look back and they’re a little cringeworthy. My favorite thing I did in that SNL audition was I did a panda bear in first class. It was just basically me as a pander bear, trying to order something in first class. It was like a two-line audition.”
For his 2002 audition, he was asked to improv with a bunch of other hopefuls, including Jack McBrayer. Fred Armisen refused to participate because he didn’t do improv. Armisen got hired. No one else did. Scheer tells the story about Lorne Michaels sneering at him for not having a question for him after his 30 years in the business. Scheer’s work on The League and West Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp speaks for itself.