{"id":270161,"date":"2025-11-04T03:56:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T03:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/270161\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T03:56:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T03:56:08","slug":"reese-witherspoon-recalls-hosting-the-first-snl-episode-post-9-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/270161\/","title":{"rendered":"Reese Witherspoon Recalls Hosting the First SNL Episode Post 9\/11"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tReese Witherspoon<\/a> is opening up about the difficult decision to host the first Saturday Night Live<\/a> episode after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Oscar winner recently chatted with Dax Shepard on his Armchair Expert podcast <\/a>about her debut SNL<\/a> hosting experience more than two decades ago, saying, \u201cI would give that zero stars. Do not recommend.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWitherspoon, who was coming off the box office success of Legally Blonde that summer, admitted it was \u201cjust too much responsibility for a 24-year-old girl.\u201d However, her \u201cSouthern and military ethics\u201d prevented her from turning down SNL creator Lorne Michaels when he asked.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLorne Michaels called me and he said, \u2018I really need you to show up. I really, really need this. Rudy Giuliani\u2019s gonna be here. All the firefighters are gonna be here. Paul Simon is gonna sing. I just need you to come out and do something a little light and tell America, \u2018You can\u2019t feel sad. We gotta laugh again. We\u2019ve got to get back the national spirit,’\u201d Witherspoon recalled. The actress-producer noted that she was scheduled to host the second episode of season 27, but that the first episode ended up being canceled following the attacks.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was 24. I also had a baby. I had a one-year-old. I was a new mom. I had the biggest movie come out that summer,\u201d The Morning Show star added. \u201cBut if you know me, if I tell you I\u2019m going to do something, I mean there has to be a real disaster. \u2026 We did it and it was good.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe post-9\/11 show also included a speech from then-New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, while being surrounded by NYC firefighters and police officers. Paul Simon also had a surprise performance, while Alicia Keys was the scheduled musical guest.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition to that episode being Witherspoon\u2019s hosting debut, it was also the first episode for longtime castmembers Seth Meyers\u00a0and\u00a0Amy Poehler.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Witherspoon thinks back to that 2001 episode, she remembers how she \u201ccompletely left my body\u201d during the entire episode and \u201cdid not go again for 15 years,\u201d referring to the long-running sketch comedy show.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe finally returned in 2015 to host SNL during season 40, with musical guest\u00a0Florence and the Machine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reese Witherspoon is opening up about the difficult decision to host the first Saturday Night Live episode after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270162,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[88,10574,12015,12016,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-270161","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-reese-witherspoon","10":"tag-saturday-night-live","11":"tag-snl","12":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}