Martin Quick had a one-season run on Saturday Night time Dwell 40 years in the past — alongside a number of different large names — however he was so nervous making the NBC sketch comedy present that he tried to give up after the primary few weeks, as he revealed on The Tonight Present Starring Jimmy Fallon.
“I had a one-year contract. As a result of it was a really bizarre yr,” he instructed host Jimmy Fallon in the course of the Tonight Present’s December 19 episode. “You recognize, Eddie Murphy had left and Joe Piscopo had left, they usually thought the present was going to be canceled. So, Dick Ebersol, who was working it then, not Lorne [Michaels], referred to as it the George Steinbrenner yr.”
Quick joined stars like Billy Crystal, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Christopher Visitor, and Harry Shearer in SNL Season 10. “[Ebersol] employed these guys that had been on tv. I had finished SCTV. Billy was already an enormous star. And Chris Visitor and Harry had finished Spinal Faucet that summer season. And so they employed us for a one-year contract.”
However Quick was “terrified each present” and needed out at one level, he admitted. “In the course of the fourth present, on the Tuesday, I went in to attempt to give up. Being Canadian and savvy, I mentioned to Dick Ebersol, ‘I haven’t cashed any checks but.’ And he mentioned, ‘Properly, you do have a contract, and if you happen to depart now, we’ll look unhealthy, and also you’ll look unhealthy. However if you happen to keep to Christmas, I’ll allow you to out of your contract.’ As a result of he later instructed me, if I made it to Christmas, I might have found out easy methods to do the present. Nevertheless it was at all times nerve-wracking to me.”
Fallon, for his half, mentioned that the stress of SNL made him nervous, too. The truth is, Fallon acquired nervous simply watching Saturday Night time, the current movie concerning the making of SNL’s first season, he mentioned.
Quick, now starring on Solely Murders within the Constructing, has made many Saturday Night time Dwell appearances since Season 10. He’ll host the present for the fifth time on Saturday, December 21.
Saturday Night time Dwell, Saturdays, 11:30/10:30c, NBC
The Tonight Present Starring Jimmy Fallon, Weekdays, 11:35/10:35c, NBC