Tim Bagley Claims He Couldn't Audition for 'Saturday Night Live' as Openly Gay Man
Tim Bagley is looking back at trying to land a role on Saturday Night Live.
In a new interview, the 67-year-old actor – who has appeared on shows including Grace & Frankie, Will & Grace, Web Therapy, and Somebody Somewhere – recalled being a member of the sketch comedy troupe the Groundlings back in the 1980s.
Despite being a part of the group that launched the careers of many SNL stars, Tim claimed that back at that time, he couldn’t audition for the NBC sketch comedy series because he was a publicly out gay man.
Keep reading to find out more…“I was out as a gay man and people knew that they would not hire openly gay people,” Tim alleged on The Julia Cunningham Show, referencing SNL boss Lorne Michaels and late manager Bernie Brillstein.
“[They] had kind of a thing where they did not hire gay people, so I never got to audition,” Tim continued. “All my friends did, and I was always kind of a standout at the Groundlings, but I was out. That [was] 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 [didn't have to]. They weren’t trying to seek out LGBTQ people back then.”
He added, “It’s taken a long time, but the SNL machine has kind of changed or shifted, and I know that there are people that have come out since.”
Tim isn’t the first person to accuses SNL of not hiring openly gay people back in the day. In 2018, comedian James Adomian told The Daily Beast that he believes he never landed a role on SNL, despite auditioning several times in the early 2000s, because he is also openly gay.
“I’m not homophobic, but I’m afraid that my audience is,” James theorized SNL execs believed at the time. “I think that Lorne Michaels is afraid of America’s dads… ‘I’m not gonna let my kid watch a show with a gay man!’”
Despite Tim and James‘ claims, Terry Sweeney was SNL‘s first openly gay cast member, who joined the show for one season back in 1985, the same year Lorne returned as executive producer following a five-year hiatus.
In an interview on the SNL50 red carpet earlier this year, Terry admitted that his time on the show was not easy.
“It was tough for me. Some people wouldn’t write for me because I was gay,” Terry told The Wrap. “Or they go, ‘I don’t know what a gay…’—like, they needed a mailman for a sketch. They go, ‘Well, we don’t need a gay mailman, so we can’t use you.’ I go, ‘You know I can deliver mail?’ So everything was like, ‘You’re gay and I don’t really know what that world is about.’ And the fact that I did drag, they were like, ‘Is the circus coming to town?’”
If you missed it, Kenan Thompson teased big changes for the next season of Saturday Night Live.