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porn.” And the sketch at dress was like a minute and thirty seconds, and he came up to me and said, “We’re unfortunately going to have to cut it out of the live show. I don’t want to — I love this thing — but we’re going to have to cut it because it’s thirty seconds too long. We’re over.” And I said, “I can do it, I’ll shave thirty seconds off.” And he was like, “Are you sure?” and I said, “Definitely.” And so I did it and I shaved exactly thirty seconds off, and he came up to me after and he said, “No one has ever been able to do that except” — I think it was Bill Murray and someone else — “and no girl, I mean no woman.” So I felt very good about myself.

LISA KUDROW, Host:

When I hosted, I wasn’t really looking at it like, “Wow, I wanted to be part of the cast of this show and I didn’t get to do it, and now I’m hosting. Yay for me.” It didn’t feel like that, because it’s too terrifying to host. It’s this speeding train, and you feel like there’s no choice but to smash into the brick wall.

I didn’t feel confident enough to impose my own taste on the sketches. I know some people do, and they are pretty firm with Lorne Michaels and the writers about, “No, this one’s no good, I don’t want to do that sketch, and you’ve got to do that sketch.” I didn’t feel right about that, because I thought, “Lorne Michaels has been doing this for fifteen years and who am I to say that sketch won’t work? He thinks it will work.” And I deferred a lot.

Thursday or Friday, you’re feeling, “No good can come of this! It’s not possible this is going to work out.” But on Saturday night, when you’re behind that door, about to be introduced, you have to gear up, focus, and commit to, “It’s going to be just great. It’s going to be okay.” I’d been told a lot of hosts end up in tears before the show starts. I thought, “Well, at least I’m not crying. It’s not that bad. So I’m going to be okay.”

At Groundlings I had done a lot of live work. It did have that great feeling of you get to own the material when it’s live. It’s between you and the audience. Unless your mind starts wandering to, “When this is over, then I have to run over there and change into something else.” That’s when you’re in trouble, because you can’t then be dealing with the task at hand.

WILL FERRELL:

The worst host was Chevy Chase. He was here the first year that we were here, and then he came back the next year and that was the kicker, the following year. It started right from the Monday pitch; you could just tell something was up. I don’t know if he was on something or what, if he took too many back pills that day or something, but he was just kind of going around the room and systematically riffing. First it was on the guys, playfully making fun, until, when he got to one of our female writers, he made some reference like, “Maybe you can give me a hand job later.” And I’ve never seen Lorne more embarrassed and red.

In hindsight, I wish we’d all gotten up and walked out of the room. It was just bad news. I will have to say Chevy’s been nothing but nice to me personally, and I think he thinks I’m funny, so I’m cool with him, but yeah, he’s been quote-unquote the roughest host. A little snobbish, and he’d yell at someone down the hallway — scream and yell — and you would look at him, and he’d see you were looking at him and he would smile like, “I’m just joking.” We’d be like, “No, I don’t think you are.”

The other kind of classic one — and he wasn’t so much abusive, but he was just all over the place — was Tom Arnold. Even Lorne was like, “This will be a bad show, this will be a bad week,” and sure enough, it was like, “Oh, this guy is horrible.” Once again, though, he wasn’t mean. I think you’ll find a consensus on the Chevy Chase thing.

DAN AYKROYD, Cast Member:

You know, it’s a funny kind of little I-don’t-know-what, but I don’t want to host. I’m a superstitious guy, like I have these little things in life — I won’t fly on the thirteenth, I don’t go under ladders, and if a black cat crosses my path, I’ll chase it with a white spray gun or something. And I just really