Saturday Night Live is one of the longest-running U.S. television shows of all time. The hit late-night sketch comedy show has been running consistently since 1975 and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon. It has received numerous accolades throughout the decades, including 84 Emmy Award wins. But with 50 seasons and over 980 episodes, all live, the series has also churned up its fair share of controversies.
According to Will & Grace alum Tim Bagley, the NBC show had much stricter casting regulations in the early days. He alleges that there was a time when SNL higher-ups like boss Lorne Michaels wouldn't hire actors who were openly gay.
Bagley spoke of this on SiriusXM's The Julia Cunningham Show via Entertainment Weekly. He says that although he got off to a strong start in the improvisational group The Groundlings—the same group that helped launch the careers of countless SNL alums such as Ana Gasteyer, Will Forte, Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig, Taran Killam, etc.—he could not pursue his dream of becoming an SNL cast member due to his sexual orientation.
"I was out as a gay man and people knew that they would not hire openly gay people," Bagley claimed.
Bagley went on to say that all of his friends had gotten the opportunity to audition for the live comedy show, but because "they weren't trying to seek out LGBTQ people back then," he missed out.
Despite this, Bagley does give the show credit for improving its representation over the years, especially with highly popular cast members like Kate McKinnon and Bowen Yang.
Per the outlet, the actual first openly gay cast member was Terry Sweeney, who joined the cast in season 11 (1985). But just because the series had casted one out gay man before doesn't immediately preclude later alleged discriminatory hiring practices. Sweeney was actually the first openly gay man on network TV, according to Out.
Even though Bagley might not have gotten the chance to fulfill his aspirations of becoming an SNL cast member, he has gone on to star in plenty of other comedy projects like the aforementioned Will & Grace, According to Jim, The King of Queens, Grace and Frankie, and Teachers.
More recently he has appeared in And Just Like That... and The Perfect Couple. He was recently cast in Mike Flanagan's upcoming adaptation of Stephen King's novel Carrie for Amazon.
To further support Bagley's claims, EW quotes an article published by The Daily Beast in 2018, in which comedian James Adomian also claimed him being openly gay may have lessened his chances of being cast on SNL. Although unlike Bagley, Adomian was given the opportunity to audition several times in the early 2000s, he just didn't get the gig. The comedian said him being out "certainly didn't help" his chances and wondered if Michaels was "afraid of America's dads."
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