Bill Hader says Ye would tell cast ‘on the regular’ that ‘SNL’ was ‘incredibly unfunny’

Not every Saturday Night Live musical guest actually likes the show. Case in point: Ye.

The artist formerly known as Kanye West appeared on SNL seven times between 2005 and 2018, but Bill Hader said that the “Gold Digger” rapper frequently made his distaste for the show abundantly clear. “He was always kinda like, nice, but then also really contentious, you know?” Hader reflected in the new documentary Ladies & Gentlemen…50 Years of SNL Music. “He had no problem telling us that he found the show incredibly unfunny. He would tell us that on the regular.”

Hader also regarded Ye’s 2010 appearance on the show — where he performed “Power” and “Runaway” from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy — as a high watermark for SNL musical guests. “It was kind of like a gauntlet had been thrown, of like, ‘That’s the best SNL performance,'” the actor said. “And it was that thing of certain artists coming in and wanting to compete.”

That 2010 episode, which saw Ye perform in front of a bright, backlit white sheet with over a dozen ballerinas, marked a significant departure from SNL‘s usual visual style. “The artist always performed — no matter who you were, whether you were Bruce Springsteen, or U2, or Madonna — you always played in front of the brick wall. Until Kanye,” Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello explained in the doc. “Saturday Night Live, which has broken a lot of rules, was now allowing artists to break one more.”

SNL‘s senior associate producer, Melanie Malone, said that the episode opened a floodgate for artists demanding more visual creativity on the show. “Whenever somebody would submit their creative, and we’d be like ‘No, we can’t do that,’ and they’d be like ‘Well, Kanye did,'” she recalled.

The documentary also pulls back the curtain on Ye’s contentious appearance in a 2016 episode hosted by Melissa McCarthy. After the SNL team removed decorative materials that the rapper’s creative team had brought to the set, Ye threatened to walk off the show. 

“Look at that s—,” the musician says in behind-the-scenes audio featured in the documentary. “They took my f—in’ stage off at SNL without asking me. Now I’m bummed. Are they f—ing crazy? I’m 50 percent more influential than any other human being. Don’t f— with me.”

Producer Steve Higgins remembered SNL boss Lorne Michaels following Ye to convince him to return to the show. “Kanye’s leaving the building and Lorne had to chase him down, ‘Don’t go, c’mon, just come sing the song,'” he recalled in the doc.

Michaels confirmed the story. “We talked and we just went over what had happened,” he explained. “I said, ‘Didn’t you tell everybody that you’re on, and that they’ll be hearing this stuff? So we’ll be here regardless and we’ll figure it out, but this is more damaging to you than it is to us, so I think you should do it.'”

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Ye ultimately performed “Highlights” (and, later, “Ultralight Beam”) from The Life of Pablo without a hitch on the broadcast, though audio of his frustrated outburst leaked a few days after the episode aired.

Ladies & Gentlemen…50 Years of SNL Music is now streaming on Peacock.