History WhatCouldHaveBeen / SaturdayNightLive

* Creator/LisaKudrow, Creator/KathyGriffin, Creator/JenniferAniston, and [[Series/MadTV Mary]] [[Series/{{Icarly}} Scheer]]: Auditioned for Season 16 (1990-91), but lost to Julia Sweeney.

* Creator/FortuneFeimster, a former competitor on ''Series/LastComicStanding'' and future ''Series/ChelseaLately'' co-star, would audition for Season Thirty-Five, ultimately feeling like she wasn't right for the show. Had she been hired, she would have been the first open lesbian in the cast. As it was, that honor went to Kate McKinnon.

* Shane Gillis: He was originally hired for Season 45 along with Bowen Yang and Chloe Fineman, but when news hit that he had a podcast where he made a lot of racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Asian, and anti-Muslim remarks and decided to double-down on his remarks rather than apologize for them, he was fired two weeks before he would have made his debut on ''SNL'', marking the second time (after Catherine O'Hara) that a new cast member left the show before the season even started (not counting the oddball Emily Prager incident, where she was listed as a featured performer for the final Season 6 episode after Jean Doumanian's dismissal, only to have her one scheduled bit cut from the show before airtime, and she never returned).

** Future UsefulNotes/AcademyAward and [[UsefulNotes/TonyAwardWinners Tony Award]] winner Creator/MercedesRuehl (who, if hired, would have been the show's first Latina cast member, as Mercedes is part-Cuban) lost out to Denny Dillon (who also made history on ''SNL'' as the show's first lesbian cast member[[note]]though not the first to be open about it, since she wasn't when she was hired, even though some cast members knew of her homosexuality[[/note]]).

* As noted above in the General folder, Creator/AlbertBrooks was approached with the idea of being the series' host. He didn't like the idea of appearing every week, and suggested the rotating host format the show still employs. He did submit several of his short films to be played on the show throughout Season 1.

* Originally, ''SNL'' was going to have Creator/AlbertBrooks as a permanent host, but NBC and the ''SNL'' show creators (Creator/LorneMichaels, Michael O'Donoghue, and Dick Ebersol) didn't want ''SNL'' to be like ''Laugh-In'' (which Lorne wrote for before creating ''SNL''), so they opted for booking different celebrities each week. Also, the first episode was supposed to have Creator/BillyCrystal as a guest performer. Crystal would later go on to host ''SNL'' twice and become a cast member for one season (Season 10/ 1984-1985).

* Creator/AlbertBrooks was approached with the idea of being the series' host. He didn't like the idea of appearing every week, and suggested the rotating host format the show still employs. He did submit several of his short films to be played on the show.

* Creator/MindyKaling: Kaling auditioned for the 2006-07 season cast and wound up being offered a job as a writer with the possibility of eventually graduating to the cast. However, Kaling was already a writer on ''Series/{{The Office|US}}'' and show-runner Greg Daniels wouldn't allow her to leave for ''SNL'' unless she actually became a cast member.

* ''Series/{{MADtv}}''[='s=] Creator/JordanPeele: Also auditioned for Season 33 when Lorne was looking for a cast member to play Barack Obama. While it was kind of a screw to the audience and Peele that Fred Armisen (a German-Korean[[note]]though, at the time, Armisen thought her was Japanese[[/note]]-Venezuelan white guy) was chosen as Obama, ''SNL'' eventually got Jay Pharoah -- a skinny black guy -- to play Obama and Jordan Peele got to play Obama on his own show on Comedy Central's ''Key and Peele''.

** [[Series/HomeImprovement Richard Karn]] was beaten by Gottfried as well.

** That November, Kaufman was permanently barred from further appearances after a viewer phone-in poll in Season 8's Creator/DrewBarrymore[=/=]Music/{{Squeeze}} episode. Kaufman was behind the idea of the poll and willing to follow it through, but the fallout from this was so damaging to his career that (at the behest of Kaufman's agent George Shapiro) the producers considered trying to get him back on the show; the plan that got the furthest was having him appear for several weeks as a background character (specifically, an African-American cleaning lady!) and then having him break character to reveal his comeback. But the producers were afraid that viewers who voted him off would object to the promise being broken -- there had already been complaints over an ad Kaufman made asking for reinstatement being screened in a "Weekend Update" segment. In 1983, guest host Creator/JoanRivers convinced them to bring him back as part of her episode, but he had a prior commitment to the Broadway play ''Teaneck Tanzi'' and couldn't participate; his death in 1984 meant that he never did properly return to the show.

* Creator/MichaelCera [[https://themessenger.com/entertainment/michael-cera-turned-down-hosting-snl-because-he-didnt-want-to-get-more-famous was approached to host]] following the release of ''Film/{{Superbad}}'' in 2007, but he turned it down because he felt overwhelmed by the sudden increase in fame he experienced in wake of the film's success. He would, however, host the show's live "episode" that was put onstage at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater during the 2007-2008 WGA Strike to raise money for the workers affected by the production shutdown.