{"id":58120,"date":"2025-07-11T23:38:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T23:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/58120\/"},"modified":"2025-07-11T23:38:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T23:38:09","slug":"john-goodman-bombed-his-snl-audition-thought-hed-get-hired-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/58120\/","title":{"rendered":"John Goodman bombed his SNL audition, thought he’d get hired anyway"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Goodman<\/a> has a long history with\u00a0Saturday Night Live, having hosted the series 13 times over the last 50 years. (Only Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin have done the job more often.) But while Goodman has always been game to play in Studio 8H\u2014including a long run in the \u201990s where he frequently cameoed on the series to play its version of Bill Clinton sex scandal sub-character Linda Tripp\u2014it could have gone even further. This is per a new interview the\u00a0Righteous Gemstones\u00a0star gave to\u00a0THR\u00a0this week<\/a>, tracing his long comedy career\u2014including that time he auditioned for\u00a0Saturday Night Live\u00a0and was found wanting in comparison to Joe Piscopo.<\/p>\n

We speak, of course, of the infamous \u201cJean Doumanian\u201d season<\/a> of\u00a0Saturday Night Live, the run from 1980 to 1981 that took place after Lorne Michaels, most of his writers, and his entire existing cast all exited the series together. There are a lot of fascinating \u201cwhat might have been\u201ds from that period\u2014Eddie Murphy basically had to beg his way into a spot on the series, while Doumanian\u2019s team passed over Paul Reubens, Jim Carrey, Sandra Bernhard, and future Oscar-winner Mercedes Ruehl. And Goodman, who was, at the time, a recent college graduate who\u2019d only worked in TV commercials and off-Broadway plays. A confident one, though: In the actor\u2019s account, \u201cI didn\u2019t put a lot of thought into it, unfortunately. I didn\u2019t have any improv or stand-up background, and I had a terrible audition. But for some reason, I still thought I\u2019d get cast.\u201d (Ah, youth.)<\/p>\n

But while Goodman getting the job would have produced at least one weird historical trivia point\u2014he might have ended up overlapping on the series for a single episode with future\u00a0Roseanne\u00a0co-star Laurie Metcalf, who holds the record for shortest tenure as a \u201cfeatured player\u201d on the series\u2014it doesn\u2019t seem to have hurt his career\u00a0too\u00a0much. Elsewhere in the (very fun, very John Goodman-ish) interview, he notes that he doesn\u2019t worry about not winning awards\u2014\u201dWe all can\u2019t be best plumber every year\u201d\u2014talks about the hip injury he suffered while working with Tom Cruise earlier this year, and notes, incredibly charmingly, that there was only one Gemstones\u00a0situation he really pushed back on, apparently being uncomfortable with a scene in the show\u2019s final season that \u201cinvolved the\u00a0soixante-neuf\u00a0[French for \u201969\u2019] position with my girlfriend. I said, \u2018I\u2019m not going to do it.\u2019 [But]they set the sexual position up in a way that it was just funny. I was only uncomfortable for an hour or so, and I\u2019m no good naked.\u201d<\/p>\n