‘SNL’ Alum Bill Hader Reveals Reason for Skipping Anniversary Special

Months after SNL50: The Anniversary Special, Bill Hader is revealing his true reason for missing the event.

Hader was a cast member on Saturday Night Live for eight years, and many fans hoped to see him return to Studio 8H again for the 50^th anniversary special.

While the special did bring back a lot of fan-favorite former cast members, hosts, and musical guests, Hader was not among them. Even though he recently took part in a commercial for Volkswagen, “Californians” style with Kristen Wiig and Fred Armisen. The initial reason for Hader missing out on the special was scheduling conflicts, but he opened up on Late Night with Seth Meyers about how anxiety was his reason for skipping it.

“Andy [Samberg] called me and was like, ‘Hey, so we’re doing this short about how, you know, anxiety, everybody had anxiety, and so it’s me calling you, and dah dah dah dah,’” Hader told his fellow SNL alum. “When he told me about it, I was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to do that.’ He’s like, ‘Why?’ and I’m like, ‘Because I’m anxious!’ I was like, ‘I don’t want to do it.’”

Hader did an impressive impression of Samberg trying to get him to do the sketch, but eventually, he gave up and ended up recruiting current cast member Bowen Yang. Even though Hader was on SNL for almost 10 years and has hosted a few times, it never got easier for him, and having to do the 50^th would have added even more pressure. So it makes sense why he decided against it.

At the very least, the SNL50 anniversary special was filled to the brim with alums reprising fan-favorite characters. It all began with the SNL50: Homecoming Concert, which saw Bill Murray reprising his classic character of Nick Valentine, a lounge singer.

With Saturday Night Live coming back for Season 51 in October, there is no telling what will be in store and what surprises there will be. Now that Season 50 is over, it’s likely there won’t be many big celebrations, but SNL’s actual 50^th anniversary is in October, so perhaps there will be one more big surprise for that. For now, all 50 seasons are streaming on Peacock.