Kevin Hart’s failed ‘Saturday Night Live’ audition featured an Avery Johnson impression
Auditioning for “Saturday Night Live” sounds pretty nerve-wracking. Here’s how Rob Huebel — a fantastic sketch comedian and improviser who trained at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, starred in MTV’s excellent “Human Giant,” and has done wonderful work on shows like “The League” and “Transparent” — once described the process: “They try to make it as scary as possible because it’s a live show, and in real life, I’m sure it is terrifying and things do go wrong, so they want you to be prepared.”
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Sometimes, even talented people destined for superstardom wind up striking out in their attempts to impress legendary “SNL” creator Lorne Michaels; a number of of those not-yet-ready-for-late-night players saw their audition footage broadcast during the recent Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special. One of them, mega-successful standup comedian and box-office blockbuster Kevin Hart, relived his ill-fated tryout during a visit to “Conan” on Tuesday night, telling host and longtime former SNL writer Conan O’Brien about his the NBA-related impression that he felt kiboshed his chances of landing on the cast:
Sure, Avery Johnson isn’t the highest-profile NBA player Hart could have picked to impersonate in his audience with Lorne. Then again, Hart deserves some credit for recognizing that:
• Avery Johnson’s voice is pretty funny (as Cedric the Entertainer noted late in “The Original Kings of Comedy”); and
• The 5-foot-11 “Little General” offered a pretty decent target of someone that Hart could reasonably play on screen. (In case you hadn’t heard, Hart is pretty short!)
Alas, despite Michaels’ passing familiarity with the NBA and its cast of characters — he’s been known to take in a New York Knicks game over the years, and he’s had a handful of players (LeBron James, Charles Barkley, Michael Jordan, Carmelo Anthony) appear on the show over the years — he didn’t seem to appreciate the subtle joy of Avery Johnson saying he intended to pass the ball to San Antonio Spurs teammate David Robinson enough to give Hart a gig. Ah, well.
Perhaps it was for the best. Hart wound up finding a home for his brand of basketball-obsessive goofs in his annual appearances in the All-Star Weekend Celebrity Game, and went on to become one of Hollywood’s most popular and bankable commodities after striking out at “SNL.” The performer he was when he auditioned was not the one he’d become; perhaps Michaels saw that in the midst of his confusion.
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“There’s a time when a thing coalesces, and we call it, later, a cast,” Michaels recently told Dave Itzkoff of the New York Times. “Our audience knows that people are at the beginnings of things, so they watch them in the same way that they watch college basketball. They’re people you might see, later on, in a more professional way.”
Sure, he was talking about Chris Farley as a Chippendales dancer, but it feels pretty applicable here, too.
Hat-tip to Vulture.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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