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Saturday Night Live alum Chris Parnell said he “never really knew” why he was fired from the late-night sketch show and later rehired.

“I never really knew, I’ve never known why it happened exactly,” he recently said on The Patrick LabyorSheaux podcast while promoting the upcoming Season 8 debut of Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty. “I don’t know. It was a big shocker. Every summer it would happen that — we were supposed to find out, I think like at the end of June whether our contract had been renewed for the following season, and it was never at the end of June, so we would usually hear from our agents, like, ‘Oh, Lorne hasn’t decided yet, so can you just wait for a few more weeks?'”

At the time, the comedian and actor recalled that he was in touch with fellow castmates like Rachel Dratch and...

Rick and Mortystar and comedy icon Chris Parnell says he still doesn't know why he was fired, and almost immediately rehired, at Saturday Night Live.

Per Entertainment Weekly, Parnell discussed the strange trajectory of his career on SNL during a recent appearance on The Patrick LabyorSheaux With Patrick Labyorteaux podcast. "I've never known why it happened exactly. It was a big shocker. [Cast members are] supposed to find out at the end of June whether our contract had been renewed," Parnell explained. "It was never at the end of June."

"Then I got a call from my manager, saying, 'I don't know what to tell you. They're not going to bring you back.' It was a pretty big hit, and you immediately realize how your own sense of worth is wrapped up in being a Saturday Night Live cast member," Parnell continued, before going on to explain that fellow SNL cast members...

In his eight years on Saturday Night Live, Chris Parnell certainly left a mark. From his dead-on impression of Tom Brokaw, to his famous rapping skills, to his earning the nickname “The Iceman” for never breaking in a sketch, Parnell’s legacy on the show is impressive. There is, however, one thing that sets him apart from every other cast member ever: He’s the only guy to have been fired from the show not once, but twice.

I recently caught up with the presently gainfully employed Parnell to discuss those two dismissals as well as the protest sketch one of the show’s writers put together to express to Lorne Michaels their displeasure with Parnell’s termination.

Before we get into the two ends of your tenure, do you have a favorite moment from your time on the show?

I always enjoyed doing the Weekend Update raps to different...

Mary Willard, playwright, TV writer and wife of four-time Emmy nominee Fred Willard, has died at the age of 71.

Willard died on July 13, but news of her death was recently made public.

Champion is the one word that comes to mind when remembering Mary Willard and she wasn’t just Fred Willard’s best cheerleader, but she also mentored and nurtured a number of creative comedic writers and actors through the Willards’ Los Angeles-based comedy sketch group The Mohos over the last two-plus decades (which anecdotally I was a part of some years ago).

‘Let’s put on a show’ was an unofficial mantra, and within less than two-weeks time, the troupe would pull wigs out of the closet and brush up pages for performances at the Io West and The Bang Theater and even as far as the Inland Empire. Those trying out sketches at Mohos had the opportunity...

By Neil Pedley

This week finds the U.S. Army bringing war games to a whole other level, a '60s sex icon getting an exposé, Ron Perlman returning as the defender of small fluffy kittens everywhere and Eddie Murphy taking cinema egotism to new heights.

"August"

After the warm reception his first feature "Xx/Xy" received at Sundance in 2002, director Austin Chick returned to the snowy slopes of Park City to debut his sophomore effort, which seemed to impress our own Matt Singer when he saw it in January. Assembling an noteworthy ensemble that includes the likes of Robin Tunney, Naomie Harris, Rip Torn and David Bowie, Chick follows Tom and Josh Sterling (Josh Hartnett and Adam Scott, respectively), two brothers desperately trying to right the sinking ship of their failing dot-com company in the weeks leading up to the devastating September 11th attacks.

Opens in New York.

"Days...

Not many movies have a hero who receives a lap dance and participates in a climactic go-kart race. But not many movies revolve around a 13-year-old who resembles and acts like a middle-age man - Jason Alexander's George Costanza, if you want to get specific.

T. Sean Shannon's "Harold" features a funny title performance by Spencer Breslin, older brother of the ubiquitous Abigail and a one-time child star himself (he played Bruce Willis' younger self in Disney's "The Kid"), more...

NEW YORK -- Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock vets Chris Parnell and Rachel Dratch have been cast opposite Nikki Blonsky, Ally Sheedy and Cuba Gooding Jr. in T. Sean Shannon's teen comedy Harold.

Parnell (Hot Rod) plays the high school gym coach who mercilessly torments the title character (Spencer Breslin), a prematurely balding teenager. Dratch (I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry) plays the teacher who forces him to remove his hat, exposing his shameful secret to the world.

Blonsky (Hairspray) plays Harold's fellow school outcast, Sheedy plays his mother, and Gooding (a producer on the film) plays the school janitor who befriends him.

Parnell's popularity on "SNL" hit its peak with the music video parody Lazy Sunday, co-starring his Hot Rod castmate Andy Samberg. He next appears in the Sony Pictures comedy Walk Hard.

Dratch co-wrote, co-exec produced and stars in the upcoming Warner Bros. Pictures feature Spring Breakdown, with Parker Posey and Amy Poehler. She also will appear in two comedies: My Life in Ruins, with Nia Vardalos, and Love n' Dancing.

Shannon co-wrote the script with Greg Fields.

NEW YORK -- Ally Sheedy, Colin Quinn and, in her first role since the hit film musical "Hairspray", Nikki Blonsky are joining the cast of T. Sean Shannon's comedy "Harold".

Blonsky plays Rhonda, the nerdy best friend of balding teen Harold Spencer Breslin). "The Breakfast Club" star Sheedy returns to the high school comedy genre as Maureen, a mother who helps her prematurely aging son cope with incessant teasing.

Quinn plays Reedy, a drunken barfly who's a regular at a strip club Harold frequents. Cuba Gooding Jr., one of the film's producers, plays a school janitor who befriends the troubled title character.

Filming on "Harold" has just begun in Blonsky's hometown of Great Neck, N.Y. The 18-year-old actress had no idea the movie would be shot there when she auditioned. "The set is my middle school", she said. "It's kinda creepy. I didn't have the best time there, so going back is definitely cooler."

Her brother attends the school and, in another coincidence, is in some of the same classes as the daughter of producer Morris S.

Comedy Central on Tuesday unveiled its 2007-08 development slate, which includes pilots from Jamie Tarses and former Saturday Night Live head writer T. Sean Shannon. Also on the Comedy plate are presentation deals for a magazine-show parody hosted by David Alan Grier, executive produced by Peter Aronson and Jordan Levin, and a sketch/variety show featuring Middle Eastern-American comedians.

Lauren Corrao, executive vp original programming and development at Comedy Central, noted the variety of projects ranged from shortform and sketch/variety to scripted narrative and animation.

"What I love about this slate most is the diversity of it in the sense that we've got scripted narrative shows, sketch shows and even a whole new format (with 'faux courtroom' pilot 'Root of All Evil')," she said. "And I love the auspices behind the projects we're working on; there's a lot of great talent."

The pilot orders (all of which are tentatively titled) include Shannon's Night Writer, described as a shortform comedy show that includes live-action sketches, animation shorts and voice-over stills. It centers on a show writer in the midst of writing, with the events occurring in real time; his distinct point-of-view sets up the comedy, while various characters react to the sketches as they unfold.

Agents Alan Rautbort and Mike Rizzo have joined ICM's television literary department. The duo exited CAA last week. While at CAA, they worked with such clients as Jill Soloway, Tom Lennon and Ben Garant, David Wayne, Vernon Chatman, Mark Guggenheim, Aaron Zelman, Noah Zaylan, Amanda Voytek, Barry Schindel, Alicia Martin, T. Sean Shannon, Jimmy Vallely, Allison Fouse, Eric Drysdale, Laurence Trilling, Tony Barbieri and writing team Howard Kramer and Chip Pope.