Louis C.K. Laughs Off Failed ‘SNL’ Audition on ‘Late Night’
Ahead of his third Saturday Night Live hosting gig in as many years, Louis C.K. popped across Rockefeller Center to visit Late Night with Seth Meyers, where he recalled auditioning for the famed sketch show years ago.
While the gig didn’t pan out, C.K. harbored no ill will. Instead, he laughed as he remembered auditioning at a comedy club amongst a handful of other comedians — Dave Attell, Laura Kightlinger, Sarah Silverman and Jay Mohr all got the job — and being the only one to not get hired.
“I had a good set, I did good!” he added. “Which makes it harder to not get it, because if you bomb, you’re like, ‘Well, I had a bad night.’ But I had a great night, and they were like, ‘No — not the best version of you, we don’t want it anywhere near this place.'”
C.K. also spoke with Meyers about writing for Conan O’Brien when he was host of Late Night. After the current host noted writers still fight to get their material on the show, C.K. assured Meyers his staff definitely hates him for nixing their jokes. He then recalled how he’d once circumvented a similar approval process by delivering a one-liner directly to O’Brien’s then-announcer, Joel Goddard.
“Joel would make a little joke before he said Conan’s name,” C.K. said. “So me and my friend Dino — we had been there longer than other writers — we realized nobody checks those. You just write them and you hand them to the guy. So we came up with one which was, ‘Last night, the Missus gave me a pearl necklace.'”
Following a brief digression about who may or may not get that joke — and the not safe for work Google search one would have to do to get it — C.K. finished the story: “Me and Dino were so excited, and we were giggling in the bathroom, ‘I can’t believe we got the joke on the air.’ And then the head writer was in the stall, we didn’t know he was in there. And he said, ‘What joke?!’ And we told him the joke and he was like, ‘Oh that’s a stupid joke’ — cause he didn’t get it!”
C.K. will host Saturday Night Live‘s season finale on Saturday, May 16th, with musical guest, Rihanna.