Dark Secrets The Cast Of SNL Tried To Hide

Saturday Night Live is probably the most prestigious comedy show in history. As a late-night institution that's been running for more than 40 years, it's launched the careers of some of the biggest stars of movies and TV, such as Will Ferrell, Kristen Wiig, Bill Murray, Tina Fey, Mike Myers, Adam Sandler, and Amy Poehler. They may be some of the funniest, talented, and photogenic people in the world, but SNL cast members are still just people—which means they're prone to the same scandals, gaffes, dumb ideas, and tragedies as the rest of us. Here are some the darker moments in the lives of SNL cast members.

"Weekend Update" anchor, Sarah Palin impersonator, and 30 Rock star/creator Tina Fey has a barely noticeable scar on the left side of her face. It's not a big deal whatsoever—but the story of how Fey came to acquire that scar is shocking, to say the least. 

In the January 2009 issue of Vanity Fair, Fey told it. When she was five years old, she was playing in front of her home in sleepy Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, when a stranger approached, and, for no reason, slashed Fey across the cheek with a knife. Fey said she never much let the traumatic incident affect her. "I proceeded unaware of it. I was a very confident little kid. It's really almost like I'm kind of able to forget about it, until I was on-camera," says Fey.

Chris Kattan has kept a relatively low-profile since leaving SNL in 2003. The erstwhile Mango and Goth Talk host Azrael Abyss co-starred on ABC's The Middle for a while, and in 2017 competed on the network's Dancing with the Stars. He was the first contestant eliminated in his season, but frankly its remarkable that he was even able to submit to the extreme physical rigors of the dance competition. 

While doing press for Dancing with the Stars, Kattan revealed that nearly 15 years earlier, he broke his neck in what he would only refer to as "a stunt thing" that has precluded him from doing physical comedy ever again. The injury had effects throughout Kattan's body, and he's had four surgeries to attempt to correct those problems, including one in his throat and one on his back. Kattan kept his struggle secret because he worried having a "physical drawback" would cost him roles. Kattan has in part blamed being in pain—and being on pain-alleviating medications—for some of his past, tabloid-worthy behavior, such as the time in 2015 he was removed from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport for acting weird.

So Murphy doesn't solicit hookers—after all, he's a family man. And how: the star has fathered nine children with five different women. Here's a rundown of Murphy's dizzying romantic and virility history. A brief relationship in 1989 with a woman named Paulette McNeely resulted in a son, Eric Murphy. Then in 1990, Murphy and Tamara Hood Johnson had a son together named Christian. Also in 1990, model Nicole Johnson gave birth to Murphy's daughter, Bria, the first of the five children they'd have together. Murphy and Johnson married in 1993 and divorced in 2006. The next year, Melanie Brown, a.k.a. Mel B., a.k.a. Scary Spice of the Spice Girls, gave birth to a baby girl named Angel...whom Murphy denied fathering until a DNA test proved otherwise. Murphy's youngest child is a daughter named Izzy, whom he had with model Paige Butcher in 2016.

Hammond is arguably the best celebrity impressionist SNL has ever had in its cast, turning in uncannily accurate impressions of Al Gore, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump, to name but a few. But for as much joy as he brought SNL viewers in his 14 seasons on the show, Hammond has struggled with the dual miseries of addiction and self-harm. In his harrowing 2011 memoir, God, If You're Not Up There, I'm F*cked, Hammond wrote of the extensive abuse his mother dished out, saying that she hit him, stabbed him, and tortured him. The comedian has been in therapy since age 19, but it wasn't a cure-all. He self-medicated and would cut himself backstage at SNL, to the obliviousness of his co-stars. "Most of the time it was really manageable," Hammond said on NPR's Fresh Air, adding that when alcohol was introduced to the mix it "sometimes got a little messy." Hammond says that on multiple occasions he sought the help he needed, checking himself into a New York psychiatric hospital.

Wyatt Cenac of The Daily Show and People of Earth got his start as an intern for Saturday Night Live in the mid-'90s. Cenac spent a lot of his time behind the scenes hanging out with cast member Norm Macdonald. One time, Cenac and Macdonald were playing soccer in a hallway of SNL's production offices. "Norm and I got into a bit of a scrum for the ball, and I ended up clipping him in the shin," Cenac told Stephen Colbert on The Late Show in 2016. "And he grabbed me, tried to throw me across the room, which is not how soccer is played. And I pushed him off me." From there, the intern Cenac and star Macdonald kept shoving each other and screaming in each other's faces until SNL cast member Colin Quinn (and Stephen Colbert, a writer on the show at the time) separated them. Cenac thinks the whole thing started because Macdonald was agitated from trying to quit smoking.

Meadows was an SNL stalwart from 1991 to 2000, and is probably best known for his portrayals of murder trial-era O.J. Simpson and Leon Phelps, "the Ladies Man." While that character very much loved women, an ex-girlfriend could argue that Leon would have treated her better. In 2016, an ex of Meadows' named Lynsie Lee called out the actor on Twitter, claiming he poured his heart out and then ghosted her. "He seriously told me he loved me and still wanted to be together and then never talked to me again. So strange," Lee says. Even worse, Lee says Meadows cheated on her...on Valentine's Day. "He's not a ladies man," Lee cleverly posted, "he's a coward."

On-screen, Chevy Chase has usually played charmingly smug and slightly aloof guys. Off-screen, he's earned a reputation as someone who's mean and nasty. When he returned to Saturday Night Live to host in 1985, he pitched an appalling idea to cast member Terry Sweeney, the show's first openly gay performer. According to Sweeney, Chase said, "I've got an idea for a sketch for you. How about we say you have AIDS, and we weigh you every week?" Chase was forced to apologize, and was invited back to host again in 1995, whom longtime cast member Will Ferrell called "the worst host" he ever worked with due to his "snobbish" attitude, tendency to scream at everyone he encountered, and how he sexually harassed a female writer.

Chase joined the cast of Community in 2009. Showrunner/creator Dan Harmon and Chase often clashed over the direction of Chase's character (a rich old guy named Pierce Hawthorne) and that Chase would frequently leave the set before episodes were finished taping. Harmon told The Hollywood Reporter that Chase was especially worried about being portrayed as a "befuddled old man" who wasn't "sexy" and that Harmon was "writing me as if I'm gay." At one point, Chase left a series of furious, profanity-laden messages on Harmon's voicemail, which Harmon played out loud during his live show, Harmontown. The ongoing feud, and those incidents in particular, led to Chase permanently leaving Community in 2012, in the middle of the show's fourth season.