Here’s Why Julia Roberts Refused to Host ‘Saturday Night Live’
With 50 years and counting under its belt, nearly all of Hollywood’s biggest stars have either hosted or cameoed on Saturday Night Live. The ones who haven’t are conspicuous by their absence. For example? Considering her phenomenal success in big-screen comedies like Pretty Woman, why didn’t SNL ever have Julia Roberts on the Studio 8H stage?
As it turns out, Lorne Michaels and the gang tried to make it happen. But Roberts turned them down for the same reason a few other big stars have backed away: She was terrified.
“It always really intimidated me how funny and clever that show is,” she told Extra in 2017, per Far Out. “So, when I was asked to do it long, long ago, I always said, ‘No,’ because I was too afraid. Too afraid to blow it.”
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Years later, however, she appeared to have second thoughts. Perhaps she would host Saturday Night Live after all — on one condition. While she was still “too scared” to host, she told Entertainment Weekly, “I would do it with Alec (Baldwin) if we could be comedy partners. Just doing skits, like putting on Christmas sweaters and talking in this kind of voice.” (She was imitating Baldwin’s NPR monotone from the Delicious Dish sketch promoting Schweddy Balls.) “Wouldn’t that be fun?”
Roberts isn’t the only celebrity who turned down Saturday Night Live due to stage fright. Orlando Bloom also refused his chance, he told Howard Stern in 2019, revealing that part of his trepidation was tied to the cue cards. “I was really insecure at the time,” Bloom told Stern. “I was just like, partly my dyslexia, partly like that window of time where I couldn’t even think straight and see the wood through the trees. I would love to host Saturday Night Live now.”
Even superheroes are spooked by SNL. While fellow Avengers like Scarlett Johansson, Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Hemsworth have taken their turns, Chris (Captain America) Evans “avoided hosting SNL like the plague for years now just because I’m so scared,” he told ET Canada. “It’s terrifying to me.”
Evans, who says he’s not a funny person, wouldn’t mind a quick cameo. But hosting “would just be one of those things that every single night I would wake up in a cold sweat,” he confessed. “It would provide a lot of sleepless nights for me.”
Another Avenger, Mark (The Incredible Hulk) Ruffalo, told Marc Maron that the prospect of hosting SNL “just scared the living shit out of me.” And rejecting the show, he doesn’t think he’ll get another chance. “I don’t think Lorne Michaels likes it when you say no.”
Like Bloom, reading issues played a role. “I’m dyslexic. I’m not gonna lie,” Ruffalo told Maron. “I’ll lose where I’m at on the page. When I hear about how that show works, changing things at the last second, and I want to be good at it. I’ve been watching that my whole life, and like, I don’t want to be the guy, the host who sucks. I owe Lorne Michaels more than that.”
