9 Celebs Who Were Allegedly Banned From "Saturday Night Live"

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West has been the musical guest on Saturday Night Live SEVEN times, one of the most frequent in the show's history. But even though he was welcomed back so many times, his appearance in 2018 allegedly cost him the potential of an eighth visit. After being given a rare opportunity to perform three songs in a single episode, West used his third performance slot to voice his support for Donald Trump and rant about the mainstream media and politics. This was not what was planned, and he was allegedly banned after pulling the stunt.

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After an appearance hosting the show in May of 2003, Brody was allegedly banned from SNL after he did an impression of the musical guest, Sean Paul, which was both completely unplanned and painfully offensive. The bit was not well received by the SILENT crowd, and was apparently even more poorly received by the show's creator, Lorne Micheals.

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O'Connor's now-infamous appearance on SNL in 1992 became such an iconic piece of pop culture, it's been parodied 100 times over. After singing a cover of Bob Marley's "War," Sinéad ripped a picture of Pope John Paul II and said, "Fight the real enemy." In her 2022 documentary Nothing Compares, she explains why she did it, stating, "I had come across an article about families who had been trying to lodge complaints against the church for sexual abuse and were being silenced. Basically, everything I had been raised to believe was a lie." The move cost her future appearances on the show, but I think we all owe her an apology.

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In 1994, Lawrence hosted the show, and during his opening monologue, he did a stand-up set about feminine hygiene that was done in such poor taste, much of it was cut from the broadcast. After his set, Martin was banned from the network, but apparently, it didn't last, as he revealed in a 2020 interview with The Breakfast Club. He said, "They banned me from NBC at the time for a minute. But then they realized the way it went down wasn’t what they thought, and then they sent me an apology letter.”

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Even though Chase was one of the original SNL cast members, that didn't stop him from allegedly being banned from coming back to the show. Having somewhat of a reputation for being difficult to work with, his apparent ban came after he hosted the show in 1997, and was allegedly abusive to the cast behind the scenes, and even hit Cheri Oteri in the back of the head during one of their rehearsals.

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In a 2005 episode of SNL, the band performed their song "B.Y.O.B.," and although the censors of the show managed to bleep out every "fuck" in the song's lyrics, guitarist Daron Malakian let out a "Fuck yeah!" into the mic that the censors weren't ready for, meaning the F-bomb made it into the initial broadcast. The show obviously has rules against explicit language, and this move caused the band to get banned from the sketch comedy show. In a 2022 interview with KROQ, bassist Shavo Odadjian said that the ban was still in effect.

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Several people who worked on SNL have gone on record saying how difficult Seagal was to work with during his 1991 appearance on the show, including David Spade, Dana Carvey, and former writer Bob Odenkirk. He made such a reputation for himself, in fact, that it was brought up during Nicolas Cage's monologue on the show a year later. Cage joked that he was the “biggest jerk who’s ever been on the show,” and Lorne Michaels himself responded, “No, no. That would be Steven Seagal.”

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Rage Against the Machine served as the musical guest in a 1996 episode where former Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes was the host. During their first song, the famously leftist band hung American Flags upside-down in protest of the conservative politician they were sharing the stage with. The band's bassist Tim Commerford even apparently ripped one of the flags up and threw it into Forbes's dressing room. After this stunt, the band was escorted from 30 Rock, not even being allowed to play their second set.

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Gillis is likely the only person who was ever banned from the show before he even got on the air. In 2019, Shane was slated to join SNL's cast as one of their newest featured players, alongside Bowen Yang, Ego Nwodim, and Chloe Fineman. But shortly after it was announced, upsetting clips of Gillis resurfaced. It was brought to light that on his podcast Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast, he made racist comments and used racial slurs, as well as making disparaging remarks about women and people of the LGBTQ+ community. Shortly after this went public, he was dropped from the cast.