Name: Gilbert Gottfried's Horrible Experience on SNL
Uploaded: 2021-11-04T17:30:02.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Gilbert Gottfried's Horrible Experience on SNL' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-11-04. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Gilbert Gottfried's Horrible Experience on SNL' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-11-04. Transcript available.

The Joe Rogan Experience. Well, with Saturday Night Live was the first
time of... Oh, I also did... I did a pilot. I was out in LA to audition for one
pilot. I didn't get... and then a friend of mine, a comic, said, "I'm in this
pilot.
You want to come and audition with me for it? I'm already in it." And I got
that. It never had. It was terrible. And that one was called "The Adventures of
Wally Brown." And one of the actors just died recently, Peter Scolari.
Oh, the guy from "Bosom Buddies." Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. And so he was one of the
stars of
that. Wow. And... but that was my first time of... I don't remember how much I
got, but
getting a check and going, "Wow, this is actual money."
So was SNL before or after that? That was... SNL was after, yeah.
And was... you said SNL was terrible? Yeah. The seat... well, the season I was
on...
like the original... well, Lorne Michaels left and the original cast left.
Oh, really?
So people hated the show before it even got on the end.
Lorne Michaels left at one point in time? I didn't know that.
Yes, yeah. Then he came back?
Yeah. Then they got in... Dick Ebersole was the next one. And... well, no...
Dick Ebersole.
Dick Ebersole was after my season. My season was Gene Domanian. And... but the
idea back
then of Saturday Night Live with different cast members, that just wasn't...
now it's
like the cast changes every five minutes.
Right.
But back then it was like, "No, we can't..." it would be like saying, like, in
the middle
of Beatlemania that, "Oh, we're getting four other guys to be the Beatles."
Right.
Or when Friends was on, "We're recasting Friends, but just watch it the same
way."
And so there were news stories and articles saying, "How dare they? This was
sacrilege."
So that's funny. So you were like the second cast?
Uh, yeah. We were the second cast and... and it's like...
And everybody left?
Uh, yeah, yeah. All the original people were gone. And it was like... see, you
don't want
to be the replacement. You want to be the replacement of the replacement.
Because then you get one guy, that's the sacrificial lamb that they throw into
the fire, and then
next it's like, "Oh, well, it's better than that other guy."
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right. Then you come in after you...
Yeah.
...and then you can actually be accepted...
Yeah.
...slightly.
Goddamn.
Did you enjoy the, like, the process at all?
No, not really. And I was... nothing new. I was always weird.
When I was auditioning, there were a few auditions. Some at a comedy club,
others in their office,
and there would be, like, lots of people there. And I would hear, you know,
other people who auditioned,
who would say, "Oh, they were so hateful of everybody else who was against them
in there."
And I remember, just out of weirdness, not courage, out of weirdness, I... I
didn't take auditioning
for Saturday Night Live as something important. I don't know why. I just didn't.
And I would go there
and do bits and everything. And when I was on it, I didn't feel like... Well, I
mean, there was a
reason I didn't feel like a star there, because everyone was torn to shreds in
the press. But...
And then when I got fired from it, I, you know, thought, "Okay." Oh, the way I
got fired from
Saturday Night Live, there used to be a table there that they would throw fan
letters, one that was
a such thing as fan letters. Now it's, you know, who writes a fan letter
anymore? It's all,
you know, emails and stuff. And that they... So, I was waiting. They had fired
the producer, and
he said, "Well, we're just going to make changes here and there. Nothing major.
Come in next week,
and we'll discuss it." And they were taking people in one by one, and I'm
waiting there. And killing time,
I see a girl writes a fan letter to me from, like, Omaha or whatever. And I
open it up. Before I even get into the office,
I open the letter, and it starts off, "Dear Gilbert, I'm so sorry about what
happened to you." So, I found out from a fan letter from some 15-year-old girl.
How did she find out? Yeah. I don't know, but she knew more than... Maybe she
saw it coming. Yeah.
Maybe she started writing it after the first episode. Oh, the writing's on the
wall. Yeah.
Yeah. This guy sucks. Was it the same kind of environment? Because the thing
about Saturday Night Live
that I keep hearing from former cast members is that it was like a dog-eat-dog
world over there.
Oh, yeah. And people would be backstabbing people and stealing their ideas for
sketches.
Yeah. Jim Brewer had a horrible time there. Yeah. I remember... Well, I
remember, like,
I didn't like the writers, and the writers hated me. And so, one time, to prove
it how much they hated me,
they wrote a funeral sketch where I was the dead body. So, I just had to lie
there in the coffin.
That's it? Yeah. Wow. Just to fuck you. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. The environment... Phil Hartman said the same thing. He said the
environment over there was just toxic.
Like, everybody was, like, at each other's throats and just wasn't fun. They
were always, like, just hamstringing each other.
Yeah. Always trying to fuck each other over and ruin each other's sketches.
Not laughing at each other's sketches when they were laying them out. Yes. That
kind of thing.
Yeah. That there was, like, a lot of politics over there. And you had to learn
the politics.
Mm-hmm. He hated it. So did Jim Brewer. Hated it. Yeah. I think, yeah, I didn't
have a great time there at all.
Some of those sketch shows are just so different than stand-up. Yeah.
Watch the entire episode for free only on Spotify.