This iconic actor hated hosting SNL so much he told others to avoid the show

Much has been made of the hosts that have been banned from Saturday Night Live. We even made a list on the dubious performers who annoyed the cast or SNL boss Lorne Michaels so much that they were never allowed back onto the show.

Something that gets less talked about, though, is the inverse. The instances in which a host is so put off by the design of the show, and the experience they have, that they vow to never return. In the case of Malcolm McDowell, he hated his SNL experience so much that he successfully talked a famous pal of his to turn a hosting offer down.

Malcolm McDowell hosted during an SNL low point

McDowell hosted Saturday Night Live in 1980, which was a historically troubled time in the show's history. Lorne Michaels decided to step down as showrunner for a brief time, and NBC decided to gut the talented cast and replace them with nobodies. The result? An awful season that nearly got SNL pulled off the air.

McDowell bore the brunt of this shoddy period. In the book Saturday Night, A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live, authors Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad claim that a sketch involving the actor, titled "Commie Hunting Season," was one of the worst in series history:

"It wasn’t McDowell’s fault. The writing was so overwhelmingly bad it would be hard to pick a most awful moment."

McDowell convinced Gary Oldman to turn the show down

McDowell would be inclined to agree. The actor hated everything about his time on the show, and this is the guy who managed to handle the demands thrown at him by director Stanley Kubrick during the making of A Clockwork Orange (1971).

According to Cracked, McDowell was so anti-SNL that he talked his close friend, Oscar winner Gary Oldman, out of hosting the show in 1992. Oldman had already agreed, but he heeded McDowell's advice, and pulled out at the last minute. Tom Arnold stepped in, and he' generally considered to be one of the worst hosts of the decade.

There's something karmically beautiful about that whole series of events. Never change, Malcolm.