Adrien Brody’s SNL Performance Was So Bad That Audiences Think He Got Banned

As far as bad “Saturday Night Live” hosts go, Adrien Brody is certainly up there. Was he as terrible at the job as Steven Seagal? I suppose not, but that’s only because the bar is in hell. Although he’s said he’d love to host again, Brody seemingly killed any chance of that happening when he went off-script and did an extended impression of a Jamaican guy, dreadlocks included. Even by the standards of 2003, this bit of Brody’s was considered awkward at best. He was just supposed to introduce that week’s musical guest, a task that 99.9% of hosts accomplish with no complications; instead, he wouldn’t let the bit die.

I don’t know what’s worse: the fact that he did that bit in the first place (see below) or that he continued doing it for 40 seconds straight. This one clip sparked an internet rumor that still persists to this day, that Adrien Brody did this bit without the show’s permission, and that this was what got him banned from making any future appearances in the series. 

It’s easy to see why such a rumor would spread: it lets “SNL” off the hook for greenlighting such a bit, it explains why Brody has never returned to the show despite his continued fame, and it helps contribute to the growing narrative of Adrien Brody being The Worst. In 2017 Brody received a lot of criticism for the reveal that his big, aggressive on-stage kiss of Halle Berry at the 2003 Oscars was not planned at all; the controversy added even more credence to the idea that Brody would go off-script at “SNL,” to the great inconvenience and discomfort of the cast and crew.

In a recent profile for Vulture, Brody explained that he pitched the Jamaican bit to the writers, and the “SNL” crew approved it and got him the costume for it. He said he did it in the dress rehearsal without issue before doing it live, a claim that’s supported by online fans who remember going to that dress rehearsal and supported by the long-running podcast “That Week in SNL,” which also debunked it in 2021: 

One of the longest running myths surrounding SNL is that this moment was completely unplanned and Adrian Brody was banned from the show because of it. That’s all completely false. Adrian did the exact same thing in dress rehearsal. As stupid as it is, this was supposed to happen. https://t.co/3FamROsDRE

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

“I think Lorne wasn’t happy with me embellishing a bit, but they allowed me to,” Brody told Vulture. Lorne Michaels famously hates improvisation on the show, since it’s not very compatible with the demands of a live sketch, so it’s easy to imagine Michaels holding a grudge over Brody dragging the bit out for a little longer than expected. 

When asked about the rumors of him being banned, Brody denied them, but added, “I also have never been invited back on [laughs]. So I don’t know what to tell you.” Talking about his experience at “SNL,” Brody also mentioned that he came in with a ton of pitch ideas. “They were all literally agape from me pitching,” he said. It’s possible that this was another Steven Seagal-esque situation, in that as bad as the sketches that aired may seem, we might be more forgiving if we’d seen all the rejected pitches the writers managed to put a stop to. 

Early into the next season of “SNL,” during an episode hosted by tennis player Andy Roddick, there was a meta sketch where tennis legend/commentator John McEnroe analyzed how Roddick’s hosting stint was going so far. When asked how Roddick might mess it up, McEnroe answered that 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” would do to Elon Musk in 2021, throwing in a random jab about how bad his episode was in the cold open of the season 46 finale, just two weeks after Musk hosted. Given how much “SNL” seems to dislike Musk these days, it seems like badmouthing a previous host’s episode is the sort of thing the show only does when they think the host was uniquely bad. (Much like Brody, I don’t think Musk will be hosting again any time soon.)

As the final piece of evidence that Brody might be unofficially banned, there was a 2010 episode of “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 be completely scrubbed from the internet, although you can still find some articles at the time describing what happened: Fey insisted that she couldn’t answer Cohen’s question, but then reportedly mouthed “Adrien Brody” to the audience. 

Fey also reportedly described Brody as a bad host in a 2006 Howard Stern interview; the audio of that interview also appears to have been erased from the internet, but it was mentioned in Stephen Tropano’s 2013 book, “Saturday Night Live FAQ: Everything Left to Know About Television’s Longest Running Comedy” (which you can purchase here), as well as summarized in one Howard Stern fan-site. It seems that Tina Fey recalled in 2006 that Brody had too many bad sketch ideas, and she speculated that he might’ve been mad about getting so many of them rejected by the writers. Although the rumor that Brody was banned from “SNL” has yet to be proven, it’s very easy to see how it spread.