There’s been some truly terrible hosts over 48 SNL seasons. Recently, Al Franken showed up on Tom Segura and Christina P’s podcast and revealed both he and Lorne Michaels considered Steven Seagal the worst host of all time. And Francis Ford Coppola may be a legendary filmmaker, but his SNL episode was just downright weird. Elsewhere, Adrien Brody was reportedly banned after his episode, in which he donned fake dreads and affected an over-the-top Jamaican accent to introduce musical guest, Sean Paul. Whether that was, in fact, unplanned remains unclear, however.
But one host who definitely did run afoul of Michaels’ intolerance for improv, was Martin Lawrence. In 1994, Lawrence was on top of his game. His show, “Martin” had been running on Fox since ’92 and proved a massive success, as did HBO’s hugely influential standup comedy showcase “Def Comedy Jam,” of which Lawrence was a host. So, when he came to host SNL, the comedian was feeling pretty good about himself. The man swaggers his way through that opening speech before wrapping up with a, “We got a great show for you tonight, because I’m here.”
And if that’s all Lawrence did during his monologue, he’d still be welcome at 30 Rock. Unfortunately he also took the opportunity to launch into a clearly unpolished bit wherein he decries the state of female personal hygiene, at one point suggesting unorthodox usage of a tic-tac to remedy the issue. Apparently, none of that section was planned, which went against Lorne Michaels’ hard and fast rule of no improv — that, and it was pretty crass, even by ’90s standards.This led to him being banned not just from SNL, but NBC as a whole.
