Buzz
If comedy were a political race, the prestigious stage of Saturday Night Live would be the equivalent of the White House. After all, there’s no faster way to gain nationwide fame than by becoming an SNL cast member.
However, even after making the cut, it's not all fun and games. Julia Sweeney once remarked that being on Saturday Night Live felt like "having an Uncle you hate paying for all four years of Harvard." Getting in, needless to say, is no easy feat.
In his book Gasping for Airtime: Digging through the Trenches of Saturday Night Live, SNL veteran Jay Mohr captured the difficulty perfectly: "Thousands of students show up every year at the doors of Harvard, but how many people actually get through the gates at SNL? A dozen? How many of those are fresh faces? Three? Four? None?"
With some exceptions—such as during years of high turnover when the show brought in established talent like Billy Crystal and Janeane Garofalo—Saturday Night Live typically hires up-and-coming performers with minimal television or film experience. Take Abby Elliott, for example. Before SNL, her IMDb page listed just five voice acting credits for two animated TV shows, and a part in a TV movie (starring her father, SNL alum Chris Elliott) that never aired. The most prominent star to emerge from SNL in recent memory, Kristen Wiig, had only a few brief appearances under her belt.
So, where do these gifted performers come from?
SNL's talent scouts primarily source comedians from four key comedy clubs: Second City, which began in Chicago and expanded to Toronto, Hollywood, and Amsterdam (as well as a touring show); Improv Olympic in Chicago and Los Angeles; the UCB Theater in New York and LA; and the Groundlings in Los Angeles. There's a reason for this: Anyone coming out of these venues has undergone extensive training and is already a seasoned performer capable of handling the demands of a live TV show.
Throughout the year, scouts invite promising candidates to showcase their skills in front of a live, paying audience, evaluating them during a 10-minute set that may include either straight stand-up or a combination of celebrity impressions and original characters. If the performer is based in another city, they may be asked to submit an audition tape. Some of these tapes, such as Will Greenberg’s and Susan Deming’s, end up on YouTube. There are no public auditions.
Can you land a spot on the show by posting your reel on YouTube?
Probably not. Most audition tapes found online come from comedians who have already made a name for themselves as live performers or were contacted through official channels. Even Pharoah, whose YouTube clips caught the attention of SNL scouts, had been doing stand-up since he was 15.
There is one notable exception from the pre-YouTube era. When Fred Armisen’s band Trenchmouth broke up in 1996, he grew frustrated with the alternative music scene. So, for the 1998 South by Southwest Music Festival, he created a guerilla video titled "Fred Armisen's Guide to Music and SXSW.” It quickly became one of the most bootlegged videos among music fans (what we'd now call "going viral"), and just a few years later, Armisen found himself on SNL.
How difficult are the auditions?
Let actor Rob Huebel, who waited seven hours and had to cut his material in half for his 2004 SNL audition, answer that: "They really ice you out," he said. "They try to make it as intimidating as possible because it’s a live show, and in real life, things can go wrong, so they want you to be prepared." (Although Huebel wasn't selected for SNL, he went on to a successful comedy career on VH1's Best Week Ever, Comedy Central's The Human Giant, and in the Oscar-winning film The Descendants.)
From Jimmy Fallon’s audition tape, it’s clear that the audience is a tough crowd. SNL creator Lorne Michaels has said that there were only two people who auditioned so well that he was ready to put them on the air immediately: Kristen Wiig and Dana Carvey.
What audition strategies have proven successful for famous SNL alums?
Many SNL cast members have taken unconventional approaches during their auditions. For his callbacks, Jay Mohr opted to get heavily drunk—so drunk that when Michaels and talent agent Marci Klein came to congratulate him afterward, Mohr was too intoxicated to have a proper conversation with them.
After being told she wasn’t strong enough, Victoria Jackson used an appearance on The Tonight Show to make an impression on Michaels. With Johnny Carson's blessing, she informed the audience that she was auditioning for SNL, then performed several character impressions and challenged Carson to guess who they were. Shortly after, Michaels hired her.
Eddie Murphy broke through in the most unorthodox way imaginable. According to talent coordinator Neil Levy, Murphy called him every day, begging for the opportunity to audition because he had 18 siblings counting on him to land a job. After a week of calls, Levy agreed to use him as an extra (since the cast was already selected). However, after reviewing Murphy's screen test, Levy was so impressed that he went to producer Jean Doumanian and insisted Murphy be hired.
