The Worst Saturday Night Live Hosts Of All Time, Ranked

Bond star Daniel Craig hosted a hilarious episode of Saturday Night Live in 2020. It was enough to redeem himself for his disastrous first attempt at hosting in 2012. On that occasion Craig tried his best, but it was painfully obvious why he’s not exactly known for being funny. Very awkward. It was also too obvious that he was reading from cue cards. 

It’s kind of amazing that it took until 2002 for Robert De Niro to finally host SNL. This was the period when he’d had a few hit comedies, such as Meet The Parents and Analyze This under his belt. So maybe he felt more confident with tackling live sketch comedy. It’s a pity that he sort of crumbled as the night went along, though, too often resorting to cue cards. Maybe expectations were just too high.

At the height of his leading man fame in 2004, hellraising Irish heartthrob Colin Farrell hosted SNL. He made a big mistake by swearing during the closing recap, but his biggest gaffe came when he introduced the music act Scissor Sisters. He turned to Seth Meyers and joked, “Maybe you could get with one of those girls?” Sure, the band was camp, but there was only one female member. Oh dear. 

Before you react with fury, yes, we know Dwayne Johnson is a five-time host of SNL and is generally a delight. But this entry is about his first time, way back in 2000. This was when he was a wrestler trying to break into movies, and the whole show played on this, even taking the spotlight away from Johnson with other wrestler cameos. He was also extremely wooden in the Clark Kent sketch. Sorry, Rock.

Houston Texans football star J.J. Watt came to host SNL with a fire and vigour that was obvious to see. But the material served up to him by the writers did not have that same level of passion. And it made for a mediocre show overall. No matter how game Watt was, he needed decent material to work with, as sketch comedy was not his day job. Ah well. 

Canadian hockey icon Wayne Gretzky was a revelation on the ice. In 1989 he became the first hockey player to host SNL and, while he wasn’t awful, he was hardly a revelation. But he’d originally turned down the invitation, when his wife called back and accepted. He told Conan O’Brien that he found out he was booked when he read it in the newspaper, and his immediate reaction was, “Nooo!”

Conventional wisdom dictates that the 2003/04 SNL season was the worst one of the modern era. Potentially the worst host of that dismal season was the Reverend Al Sharpton, a man who sometimes looked like he was offended by the very sketches he was a part of. At other points he looked so bored he might actually fall asleep. Best to give this one a miss and go back to activism, Al.

When Academy Award nominated Saoirse Ronan hosted SNL in 2017, she reportedly asked producers to include a sketch about her Irish heritage. The subsequent skit, which made fun of the Irish airline Aer Lingus, mentioned potatoes a lot and saw Ronan exaggerate her natural accent, wasn’t overly funny. But the stereotypes presented aggravated many people in her homeland, and a backlash quickly formed on Twitter.

Pop superstar Katy Perry’s 2011 hosting gig was hampered by some dreadful writing which didn’t give the singer much opportunity to show off her comic skills. She was pretty great when impersonating other singers, such as Florence Welch and Christina Aguilera. But otherwise she was shunted into the background of sketches that were way, way less funny. A missed opportunity.

Mere months after she was assaulted in the leadup to the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics, figure skater Nancy Kerrigan hosted SNL. A strange choice, given that she had no acting experience and had just experienced a mentally draining media frenzy. It was perhaps unsurprising that Kerrigan bombed. In fact, the only funny sketches were ones that played on the fact that her delivery was so stilted and boring.

On July 30, 1990 New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was banned from managing the baseball franchise day-to-day amid a scandal. A few months later he was hosting SNL, with most of the sketches leaning into his reputation as a hot-headed bully. He reportedly said no to many of the writers’ best ideas, preferring to go with what he thought was funny. Spoiler warning: it wasn’t. 

NFL hero Deion Sanders hosted SNL in 1995, and he seemed like a sure bet. He was charismatic and funny in interviews and was undeniably cool. Yet he used his hosting privileges to perform two songs from his lamentable rap album Prime Time. It went down like a lead balloon. Because Sanders is a terrible, terrible rapper. 

On any list of actor hosts completely ill-suited to SNL, January Jones has got to rank highly. She is known for her icy, almost emotionless persona on Mad Men as Betty Draper, and has rarely shown any other modes in her acting career. On SNL that persona was awkward as hell, with Jones appearing wooden and uncomfortable. She even asked for some of her cues out loud. Oof.

Walter Matthau was an incredibly funny presence on-screen. Just go watch The Odd Couple or The Bad News Bears. He could also play it (mostly) straight in gritty crime movies like Charley Varrick. What he couldn’t do, though, was host SNL with any kind of conviction. During a 2018 Watch What Happens Next interview, cast member Jane Curtain said the half-hearted Matthau was the worst host she had ever worked with. Ouch.

Insecure star Issa Rae’s first time hosting SNL was dealt a cruel hand by fate. Due to COVID, she had to host in October 2020 instead of the originally scheduled March. It meant she had nothing to promote, plus the creative team was going through a weird period trying to cope with the pandemic. In the end, her material was forgettable, and it was obvious she had no experience in sketch comedy characters. 

Nobody likes arrogance, but this is how cyclist Lance Armstrong came across when he hosted SNL in 2005. In the midst of doping allegations, Armstrong vehemently denied any wrongdoing and smugly joked about it during his opening monologue. It was all made infinitely worse eight years later when he admitted he had, in fact, taken performance enhancing drugs for all seven wins at the Tour de France.

Casey Affleck won an Oscar for his performance in the melancholy film Manchester By The Sea. An actor known for his lowkey, sensitive delivery, he tapped new realms of emotion. Yet, to promote the film, he was sent onto SNL as a guest host. It went about as well as you’d expect...so not well at all. Paste magazine noted that Affleck looked like a condemned man.

Actress Catherine Oxenberg is the daughter of Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia. And her SNL gig came in 1986, during the brief period where Robert Downey Jr. was part of the cast. Yet her performance demonstrated her inexperience all too often. At one point she didn’t realize the camera was on her, then let out an embarrassed laugh when introducing musical guest Paul Simon.

Swimmer Michael Phelps’ 2008 hosting gig was yet another case of “athlete unsurprisingly sucks at live comedy.” But perhaps it was to be expected. Because his episode was pretty excruciating to sit through. Like many others, he floundered in the live setting and resorted to awkwardly reading his cue cards. 

Basketball superstar Charles Barkley has hosted SNL four times. Why is he on this list then? Surely, he can’t be that bad if he’s been invited back so often? Well, Barkley is a strange case because his returns are predicated on being a good sport. He’ll try anything in a sketch, no matter how absurd. Yet he’s never gotten any better at his comic delivery. Just sad.

Who is Miskel Spillman? Well, she is, to date, the only non-celebrity to ever host SNL – a senior citizen who won the “Anyone Can Host” competition in 1977. She wasn’t great; the writers mostly wrote around her lack of showbiz experience. Still, we will always have the hilarious gag that landed her the gig: “I’m 80-years-old. I need one more cheap thrill, since my doctor told me I only have another 25 years left.”

In 2019 Kristen Stewart hosted SNL for the second time. Her first stint was well-received, so anticipation was high for this go-around. Yet lightning didn’t strike twice, with most observers feeling the sketches were happy to keep Stewart in her place, rather than push her with any material outside her comfort zone. So she came across far too aloof for anyone to laugh along with.

In defense of this hosting decision, there are a lot of people out there who love Bill Burr’s trademark humor. And this is what he delivered in spades with his SNL opening monologue, which took aim at white women hijacking the “woke” movement, amongst other things. But there are also a huge number of viewers who despise Burr and think his humor punches down, instead of satirizing those in power. 

In the early 2000s Canadian comedian Tom Green was a big deal. His particular brand of gross out body humor led to him getting his own star vehicle Freddy Got Fingered. But the humor didn’t translate particularly well to the SNL stage. Seeing Will Ferrell regurgitate food into Green’s mouth, as if he were a baby bird being fed by his mother, just made the audience want to barf.

Poor M.C. Hammer. In early 1990, he broke out with “U Can’t Touch This,” a single that made him super famous. By the time he hosted SNL in December 1991, though, he was already on the verge of falling off the map. He performed as the episode’s musical guest on top of hosting, but it was all to no avail; his stilted acting sunk the sketches and it was a laugh-free zone.

UFC superstar Ronda Rousey hosted SNL on January 23, 2016 and, while she wasn’t good, she wasn’t terrible either. It was obvious she was being protected by the show, though, given her lack of experience with acting and comedy. Two of her sketches were pre-filmed, and in a live one she could be seen looking at cue cards, while generally gesturing with her arms a lot and pulling silly faces. It was all a bit sad.

This entry is a weird one. Some people believed that Charles Grodin’s hosting gig in 1977, in which he reportedly refused to rehearse, improvised constantly and derailed sketches by forgetting lines, was bad enough to get him banned. But Grodin himself told The A.V. Club that it was all planned, and that he was actually invited to host again; he just didn’t want to. We guess we’ll never know.

SNL cast member Bill Hader wasn’t a fan of the entourage pop superstar Justin Bieber brought with him when he hosted in 2013. During a SiriusXM interview, he told Howard Stern, “Justin Bieber showed up with like 20 guys. He had a guy holding a slice of pizza. A guy holding a Diet Coke. You’re trying to fight through all these people to get dressed.” He also seemed unprepared during his sketches.

Hollywood veteran Robert Blake hosted SNL in 1982 and did something so disrespectful backstage that he was banned from ever returning. According to writer David Sheffield, he had a script for a sketch handed to him by writer/performer Gary Kroeger. Blake read it, then he proceeded to throw it at Kroeger’s head, telling him to wipe his rear end with it. Not cool.

Frank Zappa’s entire comic persona hinged on him being weird, experimental, and non-conformist. So when he hosted SNL in 1978, he did this, too. And it was a total disaster; he repeatedly pointed out the artificiality of the sketches and semi-ironically acted like he didn’t care he was the host. Several cast members refused to return for the goodnight segment, as a result.

Legendary vaudeville comedian Milton Berle hosted SNL in 1979, and he was such a pain to work with that Lorne Michaels banned him from ever darkening the show’s door again. And Michaels even stopped the episode from airing on TV for years, too. Berle reportedly wouldn’t play along with the writer’s ideas, using his own dated vaudeville humor. His backstage behavior was also questionable, to say the least.

Before her gig in 2012, Lindsay Lohan had hosted SNL three times and equipped herself well. This time was different, though, as a lot of jokes were made about her troubled personal life and brushes with the law. The star fumbled her lines and looked like she wanted to be anywhere else. It’s hard to imagine this being allowed to happen in 2021.

Adrien Brody won the Academy Award for his astonishing performance in The Pianist, aged just 29. He is still the youngest person to ever win Best Actor. That same year, riding high from his success, he hosted SNL. But success would elude him this time. Because after introducing reggae star Sean Paul using his own Jamaican accent with fake dreadlocks, he was never going to be invited back.

Louise Lasser’s bizarre hosting performance in 1976 blurred the lines between reality and fiction. Prior to hosting, she’d been arrested for cocaine possession, so her personal life was in turmoil. So when, as part of the sketch, she declared she was having a nervous breakdown and then ran off crying, the audience didn’t know what to make of it. She also reportedly refused to perform with anyone except Chevy Chase.

Martin Lawrence became a huge movie star in the late 1990s/early 2000s thanks to movie franchises like Bad Boys and Big Momma’s House. But in 1994 he was the stand-up comic and sitcom star who delivered an opening monologue so offensive that NBC were reportedly inundated with 200 complaints. Maybe a rant about women’s hygiene wasn’t the best idea he’s ever had.

Paris Hilton’s SNL hosting job raised such ire in cast member Tina Fey that she blasted her on Howard Stern’s radio show. Fey said, “She’s unbelievably dumb and so proud of how dumb she is.” She then called the heiress something unrepeatable. A few years later, though, Fey admitted to Gotham magazine that this was no way for a grown woman to behave.

“The Diceman,” a controversial stand-up comedy character created by Andrew Dice Clay, was a phenomenon in the late 1980s. But, when he was chosen to host SNL in 1990, cast member Nora Dunn refused to work on the show because of the character’s deliberate homophobic and misogynistic attitude. As she told Salon in 2015, “His material was terrible. He just wasn’t smart enough to handle that material.” Ouch.

Despite being the original breakout star of SNL, it seemed Chevy Chase made enemies on the show every time he returned. He and Bill Murray had a fist fight in 1978. He allegedly said something homophobic to gay star Terry Sweeney in 1985. Then, during a hosting gig in 1997, he slapped Cheri Oteri on the head. This was the final straw, and he never appeared again.

In a scathing May 2021 review, The Wrap’s Phil Owen declared controversial Tesla CEO Elon Musk the worst host in SNL history. He ranted that Musk never got anywhere near funny or entertaining and had zero charisma. He also called him a “black hole of fun.” To be fair, though, it seemed like the world largely shared this view. 

Lorne Michaels himself once dubbed Steven Seagal the worst SNL host of all time, so who are we to argue? The one-time action superstar hosted in 1991, was difficult to work with and, worst of all, was staggeringly unfunny. Cast member Tim Meadows once said the problem was that Seagal didn’t get most of the jokes that were being written for him, so therefore he considered them bad. A disaster.