Robert Downey Jr Recounts His Time on Saturday Night Live

you were on Saturday Night Live for a year yes what am I thinking about that a lot lately I know do you remember your audition I do all right only about that very fortunate and that Anthony Michael Hall and I yeah I've remained close friends load these many years we were both put to task by a director friend of ours to remember what what and how did we wind up on that show and what was that you're like yeah because most of the lore of Saturday Night Live is people come through sketch comedy or they come through stand-up and they develop characters and impressions and they get the opportunity to audition yeah I was so curious about how you ended up in that audition I came through the the weird science country Academy where we had a bunch of us had met up on this you know John Hughes write films and I was kind of like oh wow I had a part in that and I was starting to get a little notice and then Michael Hall was doing all this kind of bigger stuff and toning down huge stuff and making creative decisions about what he wanted the next chapter of his career to be and we become friends so he in a way was my first Jon Favreau he was someone who said to me I'm gonna go do SNL I'm gonna get you an audition and I bet you're gonna get yourself on the show too then they'll be lucky to have us so what do you remember the audition yeah I did some really dumb stuff I like pulled my shirt over my head and did some sort of like like bodega running character I did another guy a British guy who all he wanted to do was put a piece of tape on your head it was it was really weird super avant-garde stuff and I just do impressions as well no I've never done impressions I I have some respect for people to do them it's a skill I guess if you want to develop that skill you see how we have contempt for things that are out of our reach I guess I'm not a really good Impressionists so they all suck Oh garbage unless I have a sense of it so was it the classic audition that you're on the stage of the show and Lauren's in the audience and if I'm not mistaken there was some people at a table and I came in and it was my moment and I did some stuff and I heard some chuckles and there's some head scratching and I was like well that was kind of fun and then a couple days later I was I was told that I that I would be a not-ready-for-prime-time player and were you a fan of it before the Bush era of course I grew up on it so what did you think when that happened did you think like nobody Lucy's career I'm gonna have Chevy Chase's career you know I learned so much in that year about what I wasn't I was not somebody who was going to come up with the catchphrase I was not somebody who's going to do impressions I was somebody who was very ill suited for rapid-fire sketch comedy I was not of that ilk of the of The Groundlings or any I'd never been part of any improv group so I was kind of like wow this seems like this seems really hard and like a lot of work but I would still say to this day that there's not a more exciting 90 minutes you can have whether you are any good or not it's just amazing was it exciting or terrifying for me being young and and kind of whatever I was like there's just a blast like you're in a caveman outfit and you're running to go from this set to that set and change into a spaceman outfit and you like bump into David Bowie who's like standing by a monitor cuz him and and and Lauren or buddies you just go like cool and you go you know and he was like well done you know whatever so in the 90 minutes moment you get such validation not because you're the stand-up guy not because they're not going to say later on that you were the worst cast member they ever had which is another lie but because it's such a difficult thing to try to pull off and it's so miraculous that for you know 40 or whatever four years or whatever it is now they've kept pulling it off but you get a lot of credit for being able to even participate in that level of real time stress and excitement hey folks thanks for watching if you like what you just saw then why not subscribe click right here for lots more off camera and if you want to see the hour-long version of these conversations I'm going to give you the secret link here it is off camera comm check it out [Music]

Channel: theoffcamerashow

Views: 315,080

Keywords: Off Camera, Sam Jones, Robert Downey Jr, conversation, talk, show, interview, tv, television, movie, film, act, role, part, character, scene, Marvel, MCU, Avengers, Iron Man, Tony Stark, Endgame, Infinity War, Spider-Man, Sherlock Holmes, Weird Science, SNL, Saturday Night Live, Less Than Zero, Chaplin, Natural Born Killers, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Zodiac, Lorne Michaels, Anthony Michael Hall, comedy, John Hughes, Jon Favreau, audition, impression, stage, fired, john belushi, chevy chase, David Bowie

Id: 1-FIS5uvM4U

Length: 4min 40sec (280 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 15 2019