Unlike the majority of comedians when they’re first cast on Saturday Night Live, Beck Bennett was well known to a lot of people when the show hired him, although maybe not by name. He was the star of an extremely successful series of nationwide commercials. In fact, our article on the show’s new cast members that season referenced him as AT&T commercial actor Beck Bennett, the only one of the additions we called out in the headline.
Sadly, those hilarious commercials came to an end around the same time as his casting, and it turns out that wasn’t by accident. Bennett sat for an interview with fellow ex-SNL cast members David Spade and Dana Carvey during an episode of their Fly On The Wall podcast, and those commercials came up. He said showrunner Lorne Michaels, after he was cast, told him he couldn’t do the commercials anymore, which was a little worrying since not everyone cast on the show makes it over the long haul. Here’s a portion of his quote…
