Adrien Brody's performance on SNL was so bad that audiences thought he was banned

When it comes to bad Saturday Night Live hosts, Adrien Brody is definitely up there. Was he as terrible at his job as Steven Seagal? I don't think so, but that's just because the bar is in hell. Although he has said he would love to act again, Brody appeared to kill any chance of that happening when he went off-script and did an extensive impression of the Jamaican guy, dreadlocks included. Even by 2003 standards, Brody's part was awkward at best. All he had to do was introduce this week's musical guest, a task that 99.9% of hosts do without difficulty; instead, he didn't let the bee die.

I don't know what's worse: the fact that he did it in the first place (see below) or the fact that he continued to do it for 40 seconds straight. This one clip sparked an internet rumor that still exists to this day, that Adrien Brody did it without the show's permission and that's why he was banned from the series.

It's easy to see why such rumors are circulating: It gives “SNL” a little green light, it explains why Brody never returned to the show despite his continued fame, and it helps fuel the growing narrative about Adrien. Brody is the worst. In 2017, Brody received a lot of criticism for his big, aggressive kiss on stage at the 2003 Oscars with Halle Berry. was not planned in general; the disagreement further cemented the idea that Brody would go off-script on “SNL,” to the great inconvenience and discomfort of the cast and crew.

In a latest Vulture profileBrody explained that he pitched the Jamaican bit to the writers, and the “SNL” crew approved and got him a costume. He said he did it in a dress rehearsal without a problem before doing it live, a claim backed up by fans online, remember I went to the dress rehearsal and supported by the long-running “That Week on SNL” podcast, which also debunked it in 2021:

One of the longest-standing myths surrounding SNL is that this moment was completely unplanned and Adrian Brody was banned from the show. This is all completely false. Adrian did exactly the same thing in dress rehearsal. As silly as it was, it had to happen. https://t.co/3FamROsDRE

— This Week in SNL (@ThatWeekInSNL) October 7, 2021

“I think Lorna wasn't happy with me embellishing a little bit, but they let me,” Brody told Vulture. Lorne Michaels perfectly hates improvisation in a showbecause it doesn't really fit the demands of live sketches, it's easy to imagine Michael being mad at Brody for dragging it out a bit longer than intended.

Asked about the rumors of him being banned, Brody denied them, but added: “I've never been invited either (laughs). So I don't know what to tell you.” Speaking about his experience on “SNL,” Brody also mentioned that he had a lot of ideas. “They were all literally clueless from my pitch,” he said. This might have been another Steven Seagal-esque situation, because as bad as the aired sketches might seem, we might be more forgiving if we'd seen all the rejected tones the writers managed to pull off.

During an episode hosted by tennis player Andy Roddick at the beginning of the next season of “SNL,” there was a meta sketch in which tennis legend/commentator John McEnroe analyzed how Roddick's tenure has been going so far. When asked how Roddick could pull it off, McEnroe said he could still “pull an Adrien Brody and start babbling in a Jamaican accent for no reason.”

It was a joke reminiscent of what “SNL” will do with Elon Musk in 2021, casually commenting on how bad his episode was in the cold open of the season 46 finale, just two weeks after Musk's visit. Considering how much “SNL” doesn't seem to like Musk these daysthe previous host episode seems to be the kind of thing a show only does when they feel the host was uniquely bad. (Like Brody, I don't think Musk will be driving again anytime soon.)

The latest evidence that Brody might be unofficially banned came on a 2010 episode of “Watch What Happens Live,” when Andy Cohen asked “SNL” alum Tina Fey who she thought was the worst host on the show. The video seems to have been completely scrubbed from the Internet, although at the time you can still find some articles describing what happened: Fey insisted that she could not answer Cohen's question, but then it was reported that the audience mouthed “Adrien Brody”.

Fey also reportedly described Brody as a bad host in a 2006 Howard Stern interview; The audio of that interview also seems to have been deleted from the Internet, but it was mentioned in Stephen Tropano's 2013 book Saturday Night Live FAQ: Everything Left to Know About Television's Longest Running Comedy (which you can buy here), as well as collected in one Howard Stern fan site. Tina Fey seemed to recall in 2006 that Brody had too many bad sketch ideas and suggested that he might be angry that the writers rejected so many of them. While the rumor that Brody was banned from “SNL” has yet to be proven, it's very easy to see how it spread.