Bill Hader’s first appearance on Saturday Night Live came before he’d even auditioned for the show.
While history books might say the actor’s SNL debut came with his first episode as a cast member in the October 2005 premiere of Season 31, Hader can be seen on camera in an episode that aired months earlier.
He nearly impossible to spot without advance warning, but the future SNL star is visible in the background of an audience Q&A sketch during a Season 30 episode hosted by Topher Grace. At the time, Hader was just a visitor—observing the show alongside producer Mike Shoemaker. (The moment, broadcast in January 2005, precedes Hader’s first TV credit on Punk’d by several months.)
Hader gave background to his background appearance in an interview on Off Camera with Sam Jones, explaining how he landed a meeting with Lorne Michaels before auditioning for the show. Actress Megan Mullally had taken it upon herself to recommend Hader to Michaels after seeing him in a Second City improv show with her brother-in-law.
A typically cryptic Friday meeting with Lorne Michaels followed. (“I was on a boat once with a guy, and he was being funny in the way that Bill Murray’s funny,” Michaels told him. “And I thought to myself, ‘I know Bill Murray.’”)
After the meeting, Michaels invited Hader to return the next day to watch the show’s live taping.
“You see, way in the background, me and Mike Shoemaker standing against the thing,” Hader recounted. “[Thinking] like, ‘What am I doing here? I can’t believe I’m here right now. This is so cool.’”
At the time, the performer was thrilled just to be in Studio 8H. “I can’t even believe I’m in the audience. I just went, ‘Well, I’ll be able to tell my grandkids I one time met Lorne Michaels… I actually was on Saturday Night Live. You could see me way in the background.’ That would have been enough.”
In fact, the entire Q&A bit is something of a time capsule of the SNL writers room at the time. Appearing as audience members are Paula Pell, JB Smoove (a recurring couple in these sketches), a pre-30 Rock John Lutz, Liz Cackowski, and Jason Sudeikis. (At the time, Sudeikis was a year and a half into his tenure as a writer on SNL. He’d join the cast before the season was up.)
It’s during Grace’s exchange with Sudeikis that Hader’s sneaky SNL debut takes place. As Sudeikis stands to take issue with the host’s odd name, Hader, sporting a visitor badge, can just barely be seen in the shadows over his right shoulder.
Michaels eventually flew to Los Angeles to see Hader in an improv show, then invited him back to New York for another showcase. After that, an in-studio audition finally followed.
When the next season rolled around, Hader and Sudeikis officially became co-stars. Hader joined the show for the Season 31 premiere, making his formal on-camera debut in “Jet Blue Flight 292” and scoring a round of applause just one sketch later with an Al Pacino impression.
Check out Bill Hader’s secret SNL debut in the video below:
As soon as Hader said “Aaaanderson” as Al Pacino in one of his first sketches, I thought: “Oh… this guy’s gonna be good.”
There’s no “video below.”
Just found it using Chrome. I should dump Firefox.