Reese Witherspoon recalls challenging ‘SNL’ job immediately after 9/11 tragedy

Reese Witherspoon had accepted the job of hosting Saturday Night Live on an extremely short notice in 2001, soon after the September 11 tragedy had struck. Now, she is opening up about the uniquely exciting opportunity.

The Big Little Lies star shared during her episode on Dax Shepard’s podcast, Armchair Expert, that she was called up by SNL creator Lorne Michaels for the job and that she would give that experience “zero stars”.

“I would give that zero stars. Do not recommend,” she stated. “Lorne Michaels called me and he said, ‘I really need you to show up. I really, really need this. Rudy Giuliani’s 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, ‘You can’t feel sad. We gotta laugh again. We’ve got to get back the national spirit.’”

She also cited being a new mother and having “the biggest movie come out that summer” as two of the things which further made her feel severely under pressure.

“I 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,” she explained. Witherspoon had a huge blockbuster on her hands in 2001 with the romantic comedy, Legally Blonde.

However, the actress and producer never thought about declining the offer, explaining, “But if you know me, if I tell you I’m going to do something, I mean there has to be a real disaster. We did it and it was good.”

Reese Witherspoon’s SNL episode, which aired September 29, 2001, was also her debut on the sketch comedy series. She didn’t host another episode of the show until 2015, her last time on Saturday Night Live so far.