Saturday night live tribute to the former host Catherine O’Hara following his death at the age of 71.
The NBC sketch comedy show aired a bumper featuring O’Hara alongside a lower third of her name during the live show on Saturday, January 31, which featured the guest host. Alexander Skarsgård and musical guest cardi b.
A spokesman for O’Hara confirmed this Us Weekly on Friday, January 30, that he had died following a “short illness” and that “the family will hold a private celebration of life.” Paramedics transported O’Hara to a local hospital in “serious condition” on Friday, according to a Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman. page six reported that he had previously complained of having “trouble breathing”.
O’Hara had a unique place Saturday night livethe story though he was never officially a cast member. Because of its success in Canada’s groundbreaking sketch show SCTV, SNL executive producer Dick Ebersol tried to hire O’Hara in early 1981 when he took over the show.
Although there were stories about O’Hara being spooked by a notoriously volatile SNL lead writer Michael O’Donoghuedismissed those rumors as “BS” during a 2024 interview with people. Instead, O’Hara revealed that she decided not to take a job at SNL for loyalty to SCTV.
“Our producer would get a deal with a network, and we’d have a show for a season or two, and then that deal would go away. There’d be a break, and then we’d do the show again,” he explained. “They asked me to be there Saturday night live. And of course I said yes. Who doesn’t want to do that?”
However, O’Hara eventually withdrew from a potential spot at the Saturday night live cast of season 6 alongside Eddie Murphy when SCTV he was picked up for another season.
“Yeah, it’s not cool to take a job and leave it. You know what I mean?” he admitted, before adding: “Everything worked out the way it was supposed to.”
This decision no doubt worked for O’Hara as she won her first Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series in 1982 for her work on SCTV. (O’Hara received her second Emmy nearly 40 years later, this time for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for Schitt’s Creek.)
O’Hara was eventually the host Saturday night live on two occasions, first in April 1991 and then again on Halloween night 1992.
He forged a legacy as one of Canada’s most successful comedy exports in leading roles alone at home, Beetlejuice, The Nightmare Before Christmas i The best of the show. In 2025, he received Emmy nominations in both the drama and comedy categories for his work The last of us i the studyrespectively.
O’Hara was filming the second season of Apple TV+ the study until shortly before his death.
Catherine O’Hara reflected on feeling “lucky” to be alive two years before her death. “I’m lucky (to be) still doing things like this at my age, I can’t believe it,” O’Hara told Elle Canada in August 2024, promoting her appearance in that year’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. “During the last few years, when I have managed (…)
“I really don’t know what to say” the study co-creator Seth Rogen admitted via Instagram on friday “I told O’Hara when I first met her that I thought she was the funniest person I’d ever had the pleasure of seeing on screen. alone at home it was the movie that made me want to make movies.”
Rogen, 43, continued: “Getting to work with her was a real honor. She was hysterical, kind, intuitive, generous … she made me want our show to be good enough to be worthy of her presence on it. This is just devastating. We’re all so lucky to be able to live in a world with her.”
Many of O’Hara’s contemporaries and fans, incl The last of us to cost Peter Pascal, alone at home delivery partner Macaulay Culkincomedian Amy Schumer and host of the evening Andy Cohen – have it all they shared their own memories of the comedy icon since his death was announced on Friday.
Saturday night live airs Saturdays on NBC at 11:30 PM ET.