Over the years, former Saturday Night Live star David Spade has been outspoken on plenty of different subjects. And though he stopped being quite as controversial once he hit his middle-age years, he’s still not one to sugarcoat the truth when need be. And even though he wasn’t quite asked about the worst host he’d ever worked with on SNL, he took no time in sharing his answer: Steven Seagal.
Spade was promoting his new memoir Almost Interesting on Bravo’s Watch What Happens: Live, and when host Andy Cohen asked Spade which of his former cast-mates he found to be overrated, Spade decided not to make it about the actors at all.
Maybe the host. Steven Seagal. He was a little tough. I mean, he was actually tough, and he was tough to work with. It was hard. He did not want to play along.
Seagal, known as much for breaking people’s arms and legs in movies as much as anything else, appeared as the host of Episode 18 of Season 16, with Michael Bolton as the musical guest. And if you’re going to be less fondly remembered than Bolton in 1990, then you know you’re doing something wrong.
Spade’s admission on this front definitely isn’t the only one that’s come up over the years, as creator Lorne Michaels said it himself on the air during a Season 18 episode. Stories have circulated ever since that Seagal was very douchey to the cast and writers and generally didn’t have much of a sense of humor about anything. (And anyone who has ever watched Steven Seagal: Lawman knows this to be true in spades…David spades.) He also reportedly refused to come out of his dressing room to perform in a Hanz and Franz sketch because Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon’s characters claimed they could beat him up. A true class act.
I guess it’s no surprise that Seagal was never asked back to host the show, even though just about anyone else who has ever took the stage was asked back at some point. He would totally have been marked for death had that happened.
Check out the entire segment below, in which Spade also talks about his sparring with Rob Schneider.
With his Eddie Murphy feud mostly squashed now, Spade is free to promote his book, which came out this week on Tuesday, October 27. And check out Watch What Happens: Live on Bravo almost every night of the week on Bravo.
