TMC
06-17-2025, 08:41 PM
https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/hbo-actor-tim-bagley-accuses-snl-of-blacklisting-openly-gay-people/
“I was out as a gay man and people knew that they would not hire openly gay people (https://www.siriusxm.com/blog/tim-bagley-snl),” the Somebody Somewhere and The Great North star said on SiriusXM Radio Andy’s The Julia Cunningham Show of auditioning for Saturday Night Live in the 1980s. “It was Lorne Michaels and Bernie Brillstein had kind of a thing where they did not hire gay people, so I never got to audition. All my friends did, and I was always kind of a standout at The Groundlings, but I was out, and so that’s the problem with being out back then was there were no guardrails. I mean, if somebody didn’t want to have you on their show, they just couldn’t, I don’t know. They weren’t trying to seek out, you know, LGBTQ people back then.” A source close to SNL denied to The Daily Beast Bagley's allegation. Michaels hired Terry Sweeney (https://www.vulture.com/article/terry-sweeney-snl-50-interview.html), SNL's first openly gay cast member, when he returned as executive producer after a five-year hiatus in 1985.
“I was out as a gay man and people knew that they would not hire openly gay people (https://www.siriusxm.com/blog/tim-bagley-snl),” the Somebody Somewhere and The Great North star said on SiriusXM Radio Andy’s The Julia Cunningham Show of auditioning for Saturday Night Live in the 1980s. “It was Lorne Michaels and Bernie Brillstein had kind of a thing where they did not hire gay people, so I never got to audition. All my friends did, and I was always kind of a standout at The Groundlings, but I was out, and so that’s the problem with being out back then was there were no guardrails. I mean, if somebody didn’t want to have you on their show, they just couldn’t, I don’t know. They weren’t trying to seek out, you know, LGBTQ people back then.” A source close to SNL denied to The Daily Beast Bagley's allegation. Michaels hired Terry Sweeney (https://www.vulture.com/article/terry-sweeney-snl-50-interview.html), SNL's first openly gay cast member, when he returned as executive producer after a five-year hiatus in 1985.