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Reese Witherspoon<\/strong> has been able to show off her comedy chops in several projects over the years, so it may surprise fans that she’s only hosted Saturday Night Live<\/em> two times. She recently revealed that she waited nearly 15 years to return to the sketch comedy show after she made her hosting debut in 2001, which happened to be the first episode after 9\/11.<\/p>\n While appearing on the Monday, November 3, episode of the “Armchair Expert” podcast<\/a>, Witherspoon, 49, looked back on hosting her first episode of SNL<\/em> immediately after the 9\/terrorist attacks when she was 24 years old.<\/p>\n \u201cI would give that zero stars<\/a>. Do not recommend,\u201d Witherspoon said of her hosting debut. \u201cIt was just too much responsibility for a 24-year-old girl.\u201d<\/p>\n She then recalled the show’s creator and producer Lorne Michaels<\/strong> calling her ahead of the episode and saying, “I really need you to show up. I really, really need this. Rudy Giuliani\u2019<\/strong>s gonna be here. All the firefighters are gonna be here. Paul Simon<\/strong> is gonna sing. I just need you to come out and do something a little light and tell America \u2014 you can\u2019t feel \u2014 we gotta laugh again. We\u2019ve got to get back the national spirit.'”<\/p>\n Parade Daily\ud83c\udfac\u00a0<\/strong>SIGN UP for Parade\u2019s Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0\ud83c\udfac<\/strong><\/p>\n While Witherspoon was nervous to host following such a tragedy, she said her \u201cSouthern and military ethics\u201d kept her from backing out of her role as the episode\u2019s host.<\/p>\n \u201cI was 24. I also had a baby. I had a one-year-old. I was a new mom. I had the biggest movie come out that summer,\u201d she recalled of her daughter, Ava Phillippe<\/strong><\/a>, whom she shares with ex-husband Ryan Phillippe<\/strong>. \u201cBut if you know me, if I tell you I\u2019m going to do something, I mean there has to be a real disaster. We did it and it was good.\u201d<\/p>\n The Walk the Line<\/em> actress said she \u201ccompletely left my body\u201d during the episode \u201cand did not go again for 15 years,\u201d referring to the show.<\/p>\n The post-9\/11 episode began with then-New York City mayor Giuliani, 81, giving a speech as he stood in solidarity with New York City firefighters and police officers. Simon, 84, then appeared to sing \u201cThe Boxer\u201d before the episode got into Witherspoon’s monologue and the normal format of the show.<\/p>\n Witherspoon notably didn’t return to host the show<\/a> again until May 2015, while those two appearances mark her only times hosting the show.<\/p>\n While she admitted that experience felt like too much responsibility for her, Michaels, 80, previously told Rolling Stone<\/em><\/a> that Witherspoon was \u201cfearless\u201d while hosting the first episode since 9\/11.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve always admired her enormously for that time. There were lots of people saying, \u2018I don\u2019t think you can go on.\u2019 We\u2019ve faced that many times before, but you just have to find a way to do it. I knew it was very, very important that we show up,” he said.<\/p>\n This story was originally reported by Parade<\/a> on Nov 4, 2025, where it first appeared in the News<\/a> section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reese Witherspoon has been able to show off her comedy chops in several projects over the years, so it may surprise fans that she’s only hosted Saturday Night Live two times. She recently revealed that she waited nearly 15 years to return to the sketch comedy show after she made her hosting debut in 2001, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2133912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[345544,341657,350657],"class_list":["post-2133911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-reese-witherspoon","tag-rudy-giuliani","tag-sketch-comedy-show"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Reese-Witherspoon-Reveals-Why-She-Avoided-SNL-After-Her-Hosting.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2133911"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2133913,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133911\/revisions\/2133913"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2133912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2133911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2133911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2133911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}