Reese Witherspoon Said She’d Give Her First “SNL” Experience “Zero Stars,” And…Yeah, I Get It

Reese Witherspoon On First SNL Episode After 9/11

Appearing on the latest episode of the Armchair Expert podcast, Reese said of her 2001 hosting debut: “I would give that zero stars. Do not recommend.” As for why? Well, it was the first show back after the September 11 attacks.

Reese explained that Legally Blonde had just come out, and that she’d initially been booked to host the second show of Season 27. However, the premiere episode was canceled, meaning that Reese moved into position as the season opener. Naturally apprehensive about the whole thing, she said she received a call from SNL boss Lorne Michaels, who begged her not to pull out.

“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 recalled Lorne saying.

Reese said that quitting wasn’t an option, and she went ahead with the show. “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 said. “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.”

Even though the episode was a success, it didn’t mean that Reese necessarily loved the experience. “ completely left my body, and did not go again for fifteen years,” she said, emphasizing that it wasn’t the show’s fault. “It was just too much responsibility for a 24-year-old girl.”

And if that September 2001 episode wasn’t already memorable enough, it’s also etched in the SNL history books as both Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers' first show, too. Interestingly, Seth said in 2022 that the timing of his debut actually made the experience easier for him to manage.

“When you do your first SNL a couple of weeks after 9/11 in New York City, you realize no one else cares about what you’re going through,” he explained. “It would’ve felt so big. And then in a way that was right, it felt manageable and small to figure out how to do sketch comedy in front of a live audience, considering what all of us had just been through.”