Tim Bagley says he couldn’t audition for ‘SNL’ as an ‘openly gay’ man

Tim Bagley says everything about him to join the Saturday Night Live The cast was crushed early.

During a recent appearance on Siriusxm The Julia Cunningham showThe 67 -year -old comic actor said that despite a promising start in the field – a troop of improvisation and sketch comedy that has launched the career many Snl Stars – In 1989, he could not audition for the Sketch Comedy series because he was gay.

“I was as a gay man and people knew they would not engage open homosexuals,” said Bagley Snl The boss Lorne Michaels and the late Manager Bernie Bronlestein.

“”[They] had a kind of thing where they had not hired homosexuals, so I could never audition, ” Someone somewhere Star continued. “All my friends did it, and I was always a kind of star on the floors, but I was absent. [was] The problem of being released at the time was that there was no railing. I mean, if someone didn’t want to have you in their show, they [didn’t have to]. They did not try to look for LGBTQ people at the time. “”

In this case, Bagley is not the first person to accuse Snl And Michaels to have problems with the hiring of queer people openly during the summit of the popularity of the show. Comedian James Adomian told Daily Beast in 2018 that he thought that being openly gay prevailed to obtain a place on distribution, although he reached the hearing several times in the early 2000s.

“It certainly did not help that I was openly gay,” said Adomian. “I think Lorne Michaels is afraid of American dads.”

However, Bagley – who has proven his comic chops with guest appearances on programs like Will & Grace, Seinfeld, And Attach your enthusiasm – noted that Snl Has had its LGBTQ + representation over the years, in particular with distribution members such as Kate McKinnon and Bowen Yang becoming important personalities in the show.

“It took a long time … He was the first conscious, you know, the gay person hired,” said Bagley. “It took a long time, but the Snl In a way, the machine has changed or moved, and I know there have been people who have come out since. “”

Snl ‘s The first member of the openly gay distribution was in fact Terry Sweeney, which Michaels brought to the distribution of season 11 on his return as an executive producer at the show after a five -year interruption in 1985.

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McKinnon, who had joined the cast after playing on the Sketch logo comedy series The big gay sketch showbecame the first member of the openly lesbian distribution in the history of the program when she joined in 2012.

John Milhiser joined the cast as an openly gay man in 2013, followed by more members of the LGBTQ + distribution such as Yang, Punkie Johnson, and the first non -binary performer of the show Molly Kearney. Other members of the LGBTQ + distribution who were not absent from professionals during their time on Snl include Denny Dillon, Danitra Vance and Sasheer Zamata.

Yang started to Snl As a writer in 2018, before being promoted to the distribution the following year for season 45, becoming the first American Chinese actor of the show and one of the rare gay stars in the history of the series.

He made a name for himself at the Sketch Legendary Sketch Show With impressions of JD Vance and Fran Lebowitz, and “Weekend Update” characters ready to use like the iceberg which flows the Titanic and the viral pypopotamus Moo Deng. Without forgetting, Yang also scored four Emmy nominations during his time on SnlIncluding the creation of history in 2021 as the first star player to be nominated.

He is also at the head of a favorite sketch of last year fans during which the actor “reveals himself” himself as a toxic hetero man whose host of the night falls in love. The OG sketch featured Sydney Sweeney and the suite, entitled “Bowen’s Still Straight”, understood Scarlett Johansson.

Yang can then be seen in Bad: for good, Coming in theaters later this year.