Did You Know That These SNL Stars Have Appeared in Broadway Shows?
Dozens of SNL stars have Broadway credits. Can you name which?
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Since the start of television’s legendary Saturday Night Live in 1975, there has been cross-over between the show and Broadway. Actors who have started out on Broadway have ended up gracing our televisions on Saturday night as cast members in the sketch comedy program. And on the flip side, actors who have made a name for themselves on SNL have then done acting work on Broadway. (And this is not even to touch on the crossover of writers and other creatives!)
Broadway’s new spring crop of musical productions features performances from two SNL alumni—who both won acclaim during the same late 1990s-early 2000s era of the show. Rachel Dratch is playing the Narrator in Roundabout’s revival of The Rocky Horror Show, winning just as many uproarious laughs as she did during her days playing Debbie Downer on television. Dratch previously appeared on Broadway in POTUS in 2022. And on the southern tip of the theatre district, Ana Gasteyer is also returning to Broadway. Gasteyer actually made her Broadway debut in the last revival of The Rocky Horror Show, playing Columbia as a replacement in 2001. Her current turn as the problematic Mildred Layton in Schmigadoon! marks her second villainous role in recent years, since she played Queen Aggravain in the 2024 revival of Once Upon a Mattress. Before the season is through, Broadway will also be getting Maya Rudolph’s Broadway debut, as the SNL star becomes the newest lead in Oh, Mary!
Earlier this season, a significant number of SNL alumni made their Broadway debuts in All Out: Comedy About Ambition. The read-through play with a rotating star cast was a companion piece of sorts to last season’s All In: Comedy About Love. The short-run nature of these productions proved a perfect fit for television actors looking to test the waters of Broadway. Plus, both were penned by Simon Rich, one of the youngest SNL writers in history, which encouraged SNL stars to hop on board. All In boasted the Broadway debuts of SNL’s Fred Armisen, Aidy Bryant, Jimmy Fallon, Chloe Fineman, and Tim Meadows. Meanwhile, All Out featured Broadway debuts from Beck Bennett, Heidi Gardner, Sarah Silverman, and Jenny Slate, and Cecily Strong.
Former SNL actor Broadway debuts of the past decade have also included Janeane Garofolo in a revival of Marvin’s Room (2017), Taran Killam who first became a King George replacement in Hamilton in 2017 and then played Lancelot in the 2023 Spamalot revival, Robert Downey Jr. leading the new 2024 play McNeal, and Alex Moffat who found laughs in The Cottage (2023). The previous decade saw Broadway bows from Molly Shannon in Promises, Promises (2010) and Chris Rock in The Motherfucker with the Hat (2011).
Jim Belushi has the distinction of having appeared on Broadway both before his SNL stint and afterward. The prolific actor played The Pirate King in the early 1980s Broadway revival of The Pirates of Penzance just before his mid-1980s seasons on Saturday Night Live. Since that time, Belushi has returned to Broadway in both Conversations with My Father in 1993 and Born Yesterday in 2011.
Did you know that George Coe was in both the first season of Saturday Night Live and in the original casts of Company, Mame, and On The Twentieth Century on Broadway? Coe, who originated the role of David in Company in 1970, was the elder statesman when SNL debuted in 1975, playing older characters throughout the first season.
Coe wasn’t the only first season SNL cast member who played Broadway. Jane Curtin followed her time on the sketch show with four Broadway productions, including Love Letters, which like All In and All Out was read-through and featured rotating casts. Contrastingly, first season SNL actor Garrett Morris spent time on Broadway prior to his television years. Morris appeared on Broadway in five productions in the late 1960s and early 1970s, including Hallelujah, Baby! and Ain’t Supposed to Die A Natural Death. First season SNL star Laraine Newman later appeared on Broadway in Fifth of July in 1981. And finally, Gilda Radner made major waves on Broadway with her self-titled show Gilda Radner - Live From New York in 1979, which boasted a number of SNL alumni from various departments on the team. She also returned to Broadway the following year in the comedy Lunch Hour.
Two major Broadway stars who spent time as SNL cast members are Christine Ebersole and Laurie Metcalf. Each two-time Tony Award winner premiered on the sketch show in 1981, with Metcalf (currently starring on Broadway in Death of a Salesman) acting in a single SNL episode.
Meanwhile, two SNL actors who almost made their Broadway debuts—but didn’t quite—are Chris Kattan and Randy Quaid. Kattan was replaced during previews of The Frogs, the lesser known Stephen Sondheim musical that played Lincoln Center in 2004. Quaid was set to lead the 2007 Broadway bow of the new musical Lone Star Love and while a marquee with his face on it went up at the Belasco, the show never came in.
SNL alumni Billy Crystal and Colin Quinn have found success on Broadway with multiple solo monologue shows, while Will Ferrell also did a solo Broadway production—but while playing George W. Bush. All three penned their own work. Martin Short also penned his own show; Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me was a 2006 sketch musical with book by Short. Short has also appeared on Broadway in The Goodbye Girl (1993), It’s Only a Play (2015), and Little Me (1998), for which he won a Tony Award.
Ben Stiller has appeared on Broadway twice—in the same show. The star of stage, screen, and SNL played Ronnie in the original 1986 production of The House of Blue Leaves and then returned to Broadway in the 2011 revival in the role of Artie. Stiller’s brief 1989 stint on SNL could be traced back to his Broadway days. During the original Blue Leaves, Stiller created his own mockumentary starring his co-star in the play, John Mahoney. This led to more work in this vein which eventually led to a job writing for and then acting on SNL.
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Michael McKean appeared in one four hander on Broadway before his season on SNL from 1994-1995. The four person show, Accomplice (1990), also starred Jason Alexander just before he hit it big on Seinfeld. (While Seinfeld hit the air in 1989, it didn’t become a phenomenon right away.) McKean followed his time on SNL with a slew of work on stage and screen—including eight more Broadway productions. His credits include both plays like The Homecoming (2007) and Glengarry Glen Ross (2025) and musicals like Hairspray (2004) and The Pajama Game (2006).
