Since the show’s advent in the mid-’70s, involvement in Saturday Night Live has become a rite of passage for stars across generations and genres. We’ve seen everyone from the groundbreaking Desi Arnaz to the modern icon Kit Harrington play host. But Farrah Fawcett never hosted Saturday Night Live. Why?
It was 1976 when photographer Bruce McBroom’s picture of Fawcett clad in a red swimsuit took America by storm and made Fawcett a familiar face in homes everywhere. Her fame doubled with her sizzling performance in Charlie’s Angels, yet none of this was apparently enough to warrant an invite to host the esteemed sketch program. But there is actually a very specific reason why Facett, of all icons, did not get the gig.
A communication error kept Farrah Fawcett from ‘Saturday Night Live’
Saturday Night Live producer Dick Ebersol revealed that actually, yes, this dream collaboration of having Fawcett host SNL was on everybody’s to-do list. But one communication conundrum made this obvious teamup a near impossibility.
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“I remember once in California being asked if I would sit down with Farrah at the height of all her popularity, which was pretty amazing,” recounted Ebersol. The meeting was between himself, Fawcett, her agent, and her then-boyfriend Ryan O’Neal.
He continued, “Certainly at its heights, there were very few that rivaled it in television.” But, he added, “She didn’t do very much talking, a really nice woman.” Instead, it was O’Neal who tried taking control of the conversation—and the arrangement. “Ryan [O’Neal] kept pressing if she was gonna do the show, they would have to see all the scripts for all the sketches about nine or 10 days before the show.”
Different worlds struggled to find common ground
Speaking with Archive of American Television, Ebersol hypothesized that O’Neal did not understand just how Saturday Night Live operated, leading him to make demands for Fawcett that were incompatible with the show’s protocol.
“I think taking into recognition that it was clear that they didn’t know, I didn’t jump up and down or anything,” shared Ebersol, “just said, ‘That’s absolutely not possible. You’ll be very lucky if the sketches exist in good order in the middle of the week of the actual show. And Farrah’s monologue may not exist until 11 o’clock on Friday night or God forbid, 9 o’clock on Saturday morning.’”
So, both parties failed to reach any middle ground, and Fawcett, for all her cultural impact, did not join the ranks of those icons who hosted Saturday Night Live.
