TMC
11-03-2025, 08:55 PM
...After Hosting the First Episode After 9/11: It ‘Was Too Much Responsibility for a 24-Year-Old Girl’
https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/reese-witherspoon-avoided-snl-sept-11-episode-1236568647/
Reese Witherspoon appeared on the “Armchair Expert” podcast and spoke candidly about not appearing on “SNL” for nearly 15 years after she made her hosting debut on the show’s first episode after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Witherspoon was just 24 years old at the time and fresh off the summer box office success of “Legally Blonde.”
“I would give that zero stars. Do not recommend,” the Oscar winner said about her “SNL” hosting debut (via The Daily Beast (https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/reese-witherspoon-recalls-nightmare-snl-hosting-experience/)). “It was just too much responsibility for a 24-year-old girl.”
“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 — we gotta laugh again. We’ve got to get back the national spirit,'” Witherspoon remembered, adding that her “Southern and military ethics” kept her from backing out as the episode’s host.
“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 noted. “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.”
Witherspoon said she “completely left my body” during the episode “and did not go again for 15 years,” referring to “SNL.” Her post-9/11 episode famously started with then-New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani giving an impassioned speech while surrounded by New York City firefighters and police officers. Paul Simon then appeared to sing “The Boxer” before the show returned to its more traditional self with sketches and Witherspoon’s monologue.
Lorne Michaels previously told Rolling Stone that Witherspoon was “fearless” in her decision to host the first “SNL” after 9/11, adding: “I’ve always admired her enormously for that time. There were lots of people saying, ‘I don’t think you can go on.’ We’ve faced that many times before, but you just have to find a way to do it. I knew it was very, very important that we show up.”
Watch Witherspoon’s full interview on the “Armchair Expert” podcast in the video below.
dAJWKP_Zrpk
https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/reese-witherspoon-avoided-snl-sept-11-episode-1236568647/
Reese Witherspoon appeared on the “Armchair Expert” podcast and spoke candidly about not appearing on “SNL” for nearly 15 years after she made her hosting debut on the show’s first episode after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Witherspoon was just 24 years old at the time and fresh off the summer box office success of “Legally Blonde.”
“I would give that zero stars. Do not recommend,” the Oscar winner said about her “SNL” hosting debut (via The Daily Beast (https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/reese-witherspoon-recalls-nightmare-snl-hosting-experience/)). “It was just too much responsibility for a 24-year-old girl.”
“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 — we gotta laugh again. We’ve got to get back the national spirit,'” Witherspoon remembered, adding that her “Southern and military ethics” kept her from backing out as the episode’s host.
“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 noted. “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.”
Witherspoon said she “completely left my body” during the episode “and did not go again for 15 years,” referring to “SNL.” Her post-9/11 episode famously started with then-New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani giving an impassioned speech while surrounded by New York City firefighters and police officers. Paul Simon then appeared to sing “The Boxer” before the show returned to its more traditional self with sketches and Witherspoon’s monologue.
Lorne Michaels previously told Rolling Stone that Witherspoon was “fearless” in her decision to host the first “SNL” after 9/11, adding: “I’ve always admired her enormously for that time. There were lots of people saying, ‘I don’t think you can go on.’ We’ve faced that many times before, but you just have to find a way to do it. I knew it was very, very important that we show up.”
Watch Witherspoon’s full interview on the “Armchair Expert” podcast in the video below.
dAJWKP_Zrpk