This Is the Comedian Who Beat Out Pee-wee Herman for A Job on ‘Saturday Night Live’

In the early 1980s, Paul Reubens was killing it as one of the stars of the L.A.-based comedy group, the Groundlings. What came next? “SNL was absolutely the Holy Grail,” Reubens says in the documentary, Pee-wee as Himself.

Reubens,Saturday Night Live and scoff at the show in the way only jealous comedians can. “(We’d) suck our teeth at stuff, and be like, ‘After all these years, the sketches still don’t have endings!’” Reubens ed. 

But despite the grousing, “we still all wanted to be on the show,” Reubens confessed. “We still all thought, ‘This is it.’”

The Groundlings, like Second City in Chicago, was one of the places Saturday Night Live recruited new talent. In 1980, all of the original cast, along with producer Lorne Michaels, moved on to movies and whatever else came next. That meant a lot of job openings at 30 Rock, and Reubens, “an up-and-comer,” knew this was his big chance.

Reubens flew to New York for his audition. “I had all my costumes and all my props with me,” he recalled. “As I’m going in, a couple of people stop me and go, ‘You’re a shoo-in.’” 

But as Reubens walked into the room for his try-out, someone pointed to another comedian. “Gilbert Gottfried,” they said. “That’s the producer’s best friend right there.”

“I looked at the guy and I realize, we’re the same type,” Reubens said. “We’re both, like, the nerds in this group. And sure enough, I didn’t get it.”

The heartbreaking result might have been the best thing that ever happened to Reubens. It sure wasn’t the greatest for Gottfried. “Before we even hit the air, there were already articles being written in every paper and every magazine saying disaster was coming and how dare they continue Saturday Night Live with a different cast?” recalled Gottfried in SNL oral history Live From New York. “And that this producer is not equipped to do the job and the cast is terrible.” 

Gottfried never got much time on the show during his single season. “They didn’t use me much,” he itted. “I think the low point of what the writers thought of me was in one sketch. It was a funeral scene, and they used me as the corpse.”

Meanwhile, Reubens panicked, convinced that his career was in a nosedive. He imagined a future in which he was a Groundlings has-been, and out of desperation, decided to focus all of his professional efforts on his most popular creation, Pee-wee Herman. The rest of his characters — even the persona of Paul Reubens — would disappear. He decided to stage a live Pee-wee Herman show on his flight back from New York, according to the book Inside Pee-wee’s Playhouse. He called his parents from Los Angeles International Airport and asked them to wire money to fund the venture. The successful stage show led to an HBO special, and eventually, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and Pee-wee’s Playhouse.

As for Gottfried, the nerd who beat out Reubens? “I hated it for the longest time when someone would recognize me from Saturday Night.”