As far as bad Saturday Night Live hosts go, Adrien Brody is certainly up there. Was he terrible at work like Steven Seagal? I guess not, but that's just because the bar is in hell. Although he said he would love to host again, Brody seemingly killed any chance of that happening when he went off-script and did an extended impression of a Jamaican boy, dreadlocks included. Even by 2003 standards, this part of Brody was considered cheesy at best. He just had to introduce that week's musical guest, a task that 99.9% of hosts do without any complications; instead, he wouldn't let a little die.

I don't know what's worse: the fact that he did that bit in the first place (see below) or that he kept doing it for 40 seconds straight. This one clip sparked an internet rumor that still persists to this day, that Adrien Brody did this without permission from the show, and that's what banned him from future appearances on the show.

It's easy to see why such a rumor would spread: It fires "SNL" for a green light, explains why Brody never returned to the show despite his continued fame, and helps feed into the growing narrative of Adrien Brody being the worst. In 2017, Brody received a lot of criticism for revealing that his big, aggressive on-stage kiss on Halle Berry at the 2003 Oscars it was not planned in general; The controversy added even more credence to the idea that Brody would go off-script on "SNL," much to the discomfort and embarrassment of the cast and crew.

In a a recent profile for VultureBrody explained that he submitted the part of Jamaica to the writers, and the "SNL" crew approved and got him the costume for it. He said he did it in dress rehearsal without a problem before doing it live, a claim supported by online fans who remember you went to that dress rehearsal and supported by the long-running podcast That Week on SNL, which also exposed in 2021:

One of the longest-standing myths surrounding SNL is that this moment was completely unplanned and Adrien Brody was banned from the show because of it. It is all completely false. Adrian did the same at the dress rehearsal. As stupid as it is, this had to happen. https://t.co/3FamROsDRE

— That Week In SNL (@ThatWeekInSNL) October 7, 2021

"I don't think Lorne was happy that I was embellishing a little, but they let me," Brody told Vulture. Lorne Michaels famously hates improvisation on the showbecause it's not very compatible with the demands of a live sketch, so it's easy to imagine Michaels holding a grudge over Brody and dragging him out a little longer than expected.

When asked about the rumors of his ban, Brody denied them, but added: "I've never been invited back either (laughs). So I don't know what to tell you." Speaking about his "SNL" experience, Brody also mentioned that he came away with a ton of pitch ideas. "Everyone was literally blown away by my playing," he said. It's possible this is another Steven Seagal-esque situation, in that as bad as the sketches that aired may seem, we might be more forgiving if we saw all the rejected pitches the writers managed to pull off.

Early in the next season of "SNL," during an episode hosted by tennis player Andy Roddick, there was a meta sketch where tennis legend/commentator John McEnroe analyzed how Roddick's tenure was going so far. When asked how Roddick could mess that up, McEnroe replied that he could still "pull an Adrien Brody and start babbling in a Jamaican accent for no reason."

It was a joke reminiscent of what "SNL" would do to Elon Musk in 2021, making a casual aside about how bad his episode was in the cold open of the season 46 finale, just two weeks after Musk hosted. Given how much "SNL" doesn't seem to like Musk these daysbadmouthing a previous host's episode seems to be something the show only does when they think the host was uniquely bad. (Like Brody, I don't think Musk will be hosting again anytime soon.)

As the latest proof that Brody could be unofficially banned, there was a 2010 episode of "Watch What Happens Live" when Andy Cohen asked "SNL" alum Tina Fey who she thought was the worst host during her time on the show. The video appears to have been completely deleted from the internet, though you can still find some articles from the time describing what happened: Fey insisted she couldn't answer Cohen's question, but then allegedly told her "Adrien Brody " to the audience.

Fey also reportedly described Brody as a bad host in a 2006 interview with Howard Stern; audio of that interview also appears to have been deleted from the Internet, but was mentioned in Stephen Tropano's 2013 book, "Saturday Night Live FAQ: Everything Left to Know About Television's Longest-Running Comedy Show" (which you can buy here), as well as summarized in one page for fans of Howard Stern. Tina Fey seemed to recall in 2006 that Brody had too many bad ideas for sketches, and speculated that he might have been angry that so many of them had been rejected by the writers. While the rumor that Brody was banned from "SNL" has yet to be proven, it's very easy to see how it spread.