While reading through Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, I stumbled upon this little tidbit about Will Ferrell’s original idea for how he wanted to audition for Lorne Michaels. Take it away, block quotes:

I had read somewhere that Adam Sandler did a bit where he humped a chair like a dog when he met Lorne and was signed on the spot. Like, that was it for Adam Sandler. I thought, “When I meet Lorne Michaels, I’m not going to be trite, I’m going to do something funny, I’m going to be really funny.”

 

So my idea was that I filled up a briefcase full of money that I bought at a toy store, and while he was talking to me, I would open the briefcase and start piling fake money on his desk and just say, “You know what, Lorne, you can talk all you want, but I’m going to walk out of this room, I’m not going to know what happened to this money, you either take it or leave it.” That was going to be my big thing – and just walk out.

 

Well, as soon as I walked in with my briefcase I could tell the atmosphere was not right for it. … I was just like, oh God. And here’s Steve Higgins, who’d been hired the day before, just looking at me. I mean, what comedian walks in with a leather briefcase sitting in their lap? I’m just uncomfortable, knowing I have a briefcase full of fake money.

Despite two attempts, he never got to do this bit for Lorne but when he did come clean about it afterwards, Lorne did have a good laugh. What troubles me is that there is an alternate timeline where Will Ferrell did that bit and was never hired on SNL and there was never an Anchorman and Steve Carrell didn’t get his breakout role as Brick Tamland because this never happened:

We may have just discovered the darkest timeline. (Although on the upshot, they never had to watch Evan Almighty.)