Every Time Someone On SNL Had To Apologize

Saturday Night Live is a cultural institution and a stalwart of late-night television. Most every Saturday at 11:30 p.m. since 1975, Lorne Michaels' comedy show has presented jokes, sketches, ad parodies, a fake newscast, and musical guests to millions. By Monday morning, everyone who watched has a hot take to share with their friends, and they usually revolve around the most notable, standout, and incendiary sketches. For while SNL is entertainment, it strikes to be a hub of all kinds of satire, as its writers and cast aim to speak truth to power and point out the maddening absurdities of Hollywood, politics, and daily life.

It's in those bold steps that SNL can get itself into trouble. Once in a while, a writer, cast member, or guest will reach too far and step over the satire line and into offensive or mean territory. As it's a show broadcast by a major network owned by a huge corporation, SNL has usually been quick with the mea culpa.

Charles Rocket's face is recognizable to anyone who consumed comedy films in the '80s and '90s — he often played put-out, evil yuppies in classics like Earth Girls Are Easy and Dumb and Dumber. He didn't have as big a career as other SNL graduates, and that might be because his most famous moment from the show is among the most controversial in the sketch comedy series' long history.

On February 21, 1981, SNL parodied the "Who Shot J.R." cliffhanger from Dallas that had gripped Americans the previous year. As Dallas star Charlene Tilton was the host that night, it played out with an unidentified assailant attempting to shoot and kill Rocket. He "survived" and at the end of the show, when the cast gathered to say goodnight to the audience, Rocket sat in a wheelchair, and Tilton asked him what it felt like to get shot. "Aw, man. It's the first time I've ever been shot in my life," Rocket said. "I'd like to know who the f*** did it." That F-bomb wasn't scripted, of course, as dropping one can bring a network some scrutiny and fines from the FCC. SNL fired Rocket not long after, and NBC apologized on behalf of the comedian.

Conceived and first broadcast in the mid-'70s, SNL was a hip, youthful take on the TV variety show format popular at the time, exemplified by corny nonsense like Donny & Marie. SNL is TV's last variety show, and the last variety element of it is the musical guest. Pop sensation Ashlee Simpson booked an October 2004 SNL episode, hitting the stage to perform her hit "Pieces of Me." She returned to the spotlight for her customary second appearance, and the band started to play a different song ... while Simpson started to sing "Pieces of Me" again. Was she singing the wrong song? No, she wasn't singing at all. Evidently, she'd lip-synced to a pre-recorded backing track for "Pieces of Me," and had intended to use one for her second song, until someone played the "Pieces" track again. The band kept playing live while a frantic Simpson vamped, doing some weird dance moves before leaving the stage and the show abruptly throwing to commercial.

At the end of the episode host Jude Law more or less apologized to viewers: "What can I say? Live TV!" Then Simpson tried to explain what happened. "I feel so bad, my band started playing the wrong song and I didn't know what to do, so I thought I'd do a hoedown," she said. "I'm sorry!" She later owned up to lip-syncing, saying she used a backing track in the first place because an acid reflux incident made actually singing virtually impossible. Oh ... okay?

Whether he's stalking a gopher in Caddyshack, stalking ghosts in Ghostbusters, or randomly showing up at strangers' parties, everyone can agree that Bill Murray is hilarious. He wasn't always America's cool older brother. According to Variety, so many people apparently didn't like Murray (or didn't think he was a worthy replacement for Chevy Chase) that it warranted an at least partially facetious apology/appeal on Murray's sixth episode of SNL in 1977. Seated behind a desk (bearing a nameplate to remind viewers who he is), Murray ("Billy, but around here, everybody just calls me 'The New Guy'") confesses, "I don't think I'm making it on the show. I'm a funny guy but I haven't been so funny on the show." He goes on to explain that he's just not funny "at the right time," and that he's even losing his chops in his personal life, telling a story about how castmate Dan Aykroyd took home a lady from a party that Murray had "wanted to impress."

Murray then pulls on heartstrings, telling viewers that his father died when he was a teenager, and that his widowed mother raised him and his eight siblings. "If you could see it in your heart to laugh whenever I say something..." Murray begins his closing argument. If the last 40 years of his career are any indication, the apology worked.

In SNL's extremely popular "Wayne's World" sketches, Mike Myers and Dana Carvey portrayed Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar, a couple of metalheads who host a cable access show where they waxed poetic on all kinds of topics, particularly current events and celebrity "babes" who made them say "schwing!"

In the guise of a "Top 10 List" of things to look for in the upcoming Clinton administration, number two was "first daughter" Chelsea Clinton. "While it's true that adolescence has been thus far unkind," Myers said, referring to Chelsea's pubescent appearance, "We think she's gonna be a future fox." At the time, the presidential offspring was just 12 years old, so it's both cruel and creepy to have discussed her looks, let alone mock them.

Clinton's mother — you know, the first lady — was livid. "It's mean and nasty to pick on Chelsea's appearance," Hillary Clinton said at the time (according to the Weekly Standard). "I think it's sad that people don't have anything better to do than be mean to a child." Myers apologized in the form of a letter to the first lady. "I felt awful. It was not my intention to make fun a of a 12-year-old, but to say, 'We think you're a future fox,'" Myers told Macleans. "That it got misinterpreted sickened me to my stomach."

Once in a while, public figures so closely resemble members of the SNL family that the show can't help but mock them. In addition to Tina Fey and her political lookalike Sarah Palin, SNL star Fred Armisen and former New York Governor David Paterson could be twins. The show ran with it, bringing on Armisen as Paterson for a series of "Weekend Update" appearances from 2008 to 2010. After chatting for a few minutes, the fake newscast would resume ... which "Paterson" would then interrupt by wandering back into the shot or walking in front of the camera. The joke here is that the real Paterson is blind and can't see where he's going. Haha?

In September 2010, Paterson appeared on "Weekend Update" to tell the show he didn't like how he'd been treated. "While I have a good sense of humor, jokes that degrade people just for their disabilities are sophomoric and stupid," the governor said. Guest host/show veteran Amy Poehler then apologized on behalf of SNL. "Governor, we are really sorry. I think I speak for everyone here that we'll be more respectful of the blind."

In October 1992, popular singer-songwriter Sinead O'Connor performed as a musical guest on SNL and delivered a powerful a cappella rendition of Bob Marley's protest song "War." As O'Connor sang the final lines of the song — "as we are confident in the victory of good over evil" — she held up a photograph of Pope John Paul II ... and tore it into a bunch of little pieces. "Fight the real enemy!" O'Connor then implored the studio audience, which was stunned into silence.

The woman once best known for "Nothing Compares 2 U" thus became instantly best known for this because it upset a lot of people. "Millions of Catholics in California are incensed at this blatant defamation of the leader of the Catholic Church," the California Chapter of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights said in a statement. Students at the University of Notre Dame, a Catholic school, threatened to stage a protest during a football game scheduled for broadcast on NBC, the same network that airs SNL.

NBC went into damage control. "It goes without saying that NBC does not condone what Ms. O'Connor did," NBC vice president Curtis Block told the Associated Press. "We would never authorize something like that," he continued, adding that SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels "likewise was offended and surprised."