Jesse Eisenberg’s biggest career regret? Hosting SNL
Instead of letting the team do their job, Jesse Eisenberg spent the week secretly slipping scripts to different actors
For many celebrities, hosting Saturday Night Live is a career highlight—but for Jesse Eisenberg, it was more of a disaster than a dream.
During an appearance on Today with Jenna & Friends on February 10, the Social Network star reflected on his 2011 SNL hosting stint, revealing that he made a huge mistake that still haunts him.
“I think they said it was the best episode they ever did,” Eisenberg joked before admitting, “I only have bad memories because I did such a dumb thing.”
The actor, who once dreamed of writing for SNL, explained that he naively thought he could write all the sketches himself. “I didn’t know how it works. It turns out, they have writers,” he shared.
Instead of letting the team do their job, Eisenberg spent the week secretly slipping scripts to different actors, thinking they might get picked. “I didn’t realize that was not the way you do that,” he admitted.
When host Jenna Bush Hager asked if any of his ideas made it to air, he laughed: “It was so unbelievably inappropriate and offensive of me that, no.”
Fellow guest Amy Poehler, a former SNL star, reassured him, saying: “You kind of worked too hard… which is better than not trying at all.”
Eisenberg, however, joked that his enthusiasm may have backfired: “Not according to the people who wrote the show! They wished I went the other way.”
