Whoopi Goldberg Reveals Why She Turned Down Hosting ‘SNL’

Whoopi Goldberg confirmed Sunday night that she turned down the opportunity to host Saturday Night Live. “It required a week, it required you to sit with people and write sketches and I didn’t really have the time and I didn’t want to do that,” the comedian and moderator of The View said on the red carpet for SNL’s 50th anniversary special. “I just wanted to work on my own.” Goldberg was impersonated on the show dozens of times over the years—mostly by male cast members like Chris Rock, Tim Meadows, and Kenan Thompson due to the show’s lack of Black female sketch players for most of its 50 year history. And she did make two cameos decades apart, first during a sketch in 1986 and then when Justin Bieber personally asked her to introduce his musical performance in 2013.