Julia Louis-Dreyfus explains why her SNL days were doomed

With its 50th season currently airing, Saturday Night Live has seen its share of ups, downs and humiliations. It, too, has seen well over 150 cast members take the stage throughout its history, and that includes plenty that you either forgot about or had no idea were even on SNL. We’re talking people like Gilbert Gottfried, Laurie Metcalf, Joan Cusack, Julia Louis-Dreyfus – you probably could have guessed these were all in the ‘80s…Far removed from her brutal days on SNL in the mid-’80s, Louis-Dreyfus remembers where it all started – and not in a good way.

Appearing on the Wiser Than Me podcast, Julia Louis-Dreyfus recalled being spotted at a Chicago-based theater and being invited, along with what she called fellow “complete and total unknowns”, to perform part of the show in New York. Unfortunately, the setting and circumstances didn’t lend to the environment Louis-Dreyfus and company were used to – and neither did the New York state of mind. As Louis-Dreyfus recalled, they were “under fluorescent lights in the middle of the day in front of 20 very cynical, unfriendly SNL cast members and writers who already hated us because a bunch of their best friends had just been fired to make room for us.”

Julia Louis-Dreyfus would – along with Gary Kroeger and future husband Brad Hall – join SNL for its eighth season in 1982, with Louis-Dreyfus sticking on for three seasons. But that moment under those awful lights cast a shadow over her entire SNL stint. “We never had a chance. Sketches that had killed in Chicago died a terrible, terrible death that day. It was excruciating. I think that humiliation influenced our whole SNL experience for the next couple of years, to tell you the truth…I’ve learned a lot since that cringy day in a carpeted office on the 17th floor of 30 Rock.”

Julia Louis-Dreyfus would have her final SNL episode as a cast member in 1985, leaving the show alongside the likes of Martin Short, Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest, and Jim Belushi. The host of that final episode was sports announcer Howard Cosell, just to give you an idea of where Saturday Night Live was at the time. Despite her rough go in Studio 8H, Louis-Dreyfus would return to host SNL a total of three times. And she’s done fine elsewhere, too…

Have you seen any episodes of SNL that Julia Louis-Dreyfus was on? If so, how do you think she did, considering?