Lorne Michaels refused when an SNL star asked to be fired

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For countless comedians, Saturday Night Live is a dream job and would be the crowning achievement of their career. But one cast member had second thoughts and even went so far as to ask Lorne Michaels to fire him. Thankfully, the SNL boss refused.

Saturday Night Live has a long list of fired cast members. Some, like Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, and Norm Macdonald, deserved a longer tenure. However, others were let go at the right time for various reasons, whether it was clashing with Michaels or failing to produce quality content. But it's hard to imagine many SNL cast members asked to be fired.

Enter Pete Davidson. The stand-up comedian admitted in the Peacock documentary SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night that he asked to be fired from the show. According to Davidson, feeling like an imposter or a fraud influenced the request.

"After my first year, I acutally called for a meeting with Lorne," Davidson says in the documentary's first episode. "And I was like 'please fire me.' And he was like 'why?' and I was like 'I don't belong here ... everyone here is so talented and they dont' want to be my friend."

That kind of attitude doesn't exactly instill confidence in management. But Michaels saw something in Davidson from the start, hiring him in 2014 at 20 years old.

"And [Lorne] said you don't figure it out until your third or fourth year," Davidson shared. Michaels basically told Davidson to suck it up for a few years and eventually it would all work out. The comedian admitted Michaels was right and things did get better.

Davidson improved as his tenure at Saturday Night Live progressed. He found his voice at the "Weekend Update" desk, moving beyond just "SNL's resident young person."

And his Chad sketches struck a chord with audiences and gave him a recurring character. Davidson's music videos and song parodies also leveled up as time went on and he soon became a foundational piece of the Saturday Night Live cast.

There are hundreds of "what if?" stories in the Saturday Night Live universe. Luckily, we never found what would have happened if Lorne Michaels granted Pete Davidson's request to get fired.