The Time An 'SNL' Cast Member Said “F**k You” To Me And Very Much Meant It

I used to write a weekly feature about Saturday Night Live called SNL Scorecard. In 2010, I initially pitched Vulture this idea when Mark Graham, who did their SNL recaps at the time, left for (I think?) VH-1. For its final season, I was doing weekly Lost interviews for Vulture and my SNL pitch for that fall was: every SNL recap at the time seems to be, "here are the best three sketches of the night," but what if we covered every single sketch, graded them, then ranked them from best to worst. I wanted it to be so detailed and so in the SNL weeds it bordered on obnoxious. Vulture was not interested.

By that fall, I was working at Movieline and tried this pitch again with my editor, Stu VanAirsdale. I knew Stu liked the idea of going overboard¹ on a concept as long as the actual coverage was worthwhile and not just long for the sake of being long.² SNL Scorecard had the green-light. In March of 2011, I was laid off from Movieline, but SNL Scorecard did so well, traffic-wise, they kept paying me to do the feature and finish out the season even though I no longer worked there.

¹Okay, not always. I've mentioned this before, but I had an idea to recap the David Spade sitcom Rules of Engagement, but I wanted to treat it like I was recapping Lost. I sent an elaborate pitch about how every recap would focus on the show's deeper meaning, while developing theories about how it will all end. I just remember Stu saying, "I'm not going to let you do that."

²I remember writing, in great detail, about a particular plot point of a movie I did not like, though I no longer remember the specific movie. The copy I turned in was basically filled with charts, graphs, asides, personal anecdotes, and way too much flowery language to get my point across. Stu messaged me this section of my piece with the note, "I don't understand this, what are you trying to say?" I responded, "I think this plot point is bad." Stu replied, "Okay, great, just say that instead." It's the best editorial advice I've ever received. Also, I still have a tendency to ignore it.

SNL Scorecard would live on when I worked at Huffington Post. I wound up writing SNL Scorecard for seven seasons, finally deciding to give it up in 2017.

Now, for a few of those seasons, I was also writing a feature called the SNL Relevancy Poll. The concept was, every week, I'd rank the cast members by how well they did that week. There was no real rhyme or reason to this ranking. It was mostly vibes. Also, the rankings had nothing to do with prior shows. One week a cast member could be first, the next week last. I deeply regret this feature. In all honesty, it wasn't intended to be mean-spirited, but it was mean-spirited.

Back then, I didn't quite understand that the people I was writing about also had the ability to access the internet and read the words that were published. It never crossed my mind that any of these people would at all care about this ranking, let alone even notice it.

Oh, one SNL cast member sure noticed. And he let me know about it pretty emphatically, to my face.