Briney Spears has had a rough go at it lately.
First, there are the secrets uncovered from her Framing Britney Spears documentary.
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And now, we find out that she’s even indirectly the reason why Zach Galifianakis got fired from Saturday Night Live (SNL ) after only two weeks.
Turns out, his sketches about the star were simply not funny.
*Saturday Night Live* has seen many celeb faces come and go over the years.
While most of them simply quit to move on to bigger and better projects, the show’s past is also littered with famous celebs who were fired…
This includes big names, such as Adam Sandler and Sarah Silverman.
Starting with Adam, he and his late best friend, Chris Farley, were fired at the same time.
Thing is, he still doesn’t know why they were fired.
He told The Daily Beast : “Yes, we were [fired]. We kind of quit at the same time as being fired.”
“It was the end of the run for us. The fact that me and him got fired? Who knows.”
Things were a little more clear with Sarah Silverman’s release from the show.
She was fired from SNL via fax after working there for a year as a writer and cast member.
The reason for her firing? Apparently, none of her sketches were funny enough.
Another celeb who shares this same history with SNL is Zach Galifianakis.
You know him best from The Hangover franchise or his hilariously awkward, Between Two Ferns , series. But he actually worked on SNL as a writer in 2000. Thing is, he only lasted two weeks…
The actor recently explained why he was fired after two weeks while on Rob Lowe’s “Literally! With Rob Lowe” podcast.
Turns out, it all had to do with Britney Spears.
Since the pop star was hosting the show, he was tasked with coming up with sketch ideas for her.
This didn’t go well, as he said that all of the ideas he pitched “bombed very badly.”
One particular rejected sketch involved her belly button.
In his words: her “belly button was always exposed then and I thought she needed to protect it.”
In order to keep her belly button safe, his sketch would have featured former *SNL* cast member, Will Ferrell, as a security guard who would be tiny via a green screen.
If you didn’t laugh, you’d be in good company with those in the writers’ room at the time.
“It felt like a tumbleweed went right across the writers’ room table, and a cricket riding it,” Zach told Lowe.
“I’m not offended that no one liked it. It was probably bad,” he continued.
Another failed sketch idea was one that he pitched directly to Britney. He told Spears that the idea was for her to be interviewed by Entertainment Tonight .
But here’s the kicker: “There’s no jokes. And during the middle of the interview you just start bleeding from the mouth.”
Like those in the writer’s room, her response wasn’t exactly enthusiastic.
“She looks at me, and then she looks at the ground, and then I looked at the ground, and she looks back up at me, I look at her, and she goes, ‘Yeah, that’s funny,’” Zalifianakis said.
Well, at least we know that Britney has always been a sweetheart!
During his interview with Rob, Galifianakis revealed that while SNL was his “dream job,” he wasn’t ready for it.
“To be a fly on the wall in the writers’ room. I didn’t know what I was doing,” he admitted.
“I was a standup, I had never written sketches to turn in. It was not easy, I don’t know if ‘supportive’ is necessarily the word I would use there,” he continued.
“But you’re new there, and in show business, especially as a standup, you get a thick skin.”
For more of Zach’s interview, check out Rob’s podcast !
