The incident in question happened in 2003 when Adrien Brody hosted alongside musical guest Sean Paul. While introducing Paul, Brody dressed in a dreadlocked wig and spoke in a Jamaican accent (since Sean Paul is Jamaican and had really prominent reggae/dancehall songs at the time, like “Get Busy,” which he performed on that episode). As Far Out Magazine reported, Brody said, “Ya, ya, ya, ya, you know, man. We got original rude boy Sean Paul here.” The audience notably stayed quiet as he used slang like “Big up Kingston Massive!”
Right away, the story that stuck about his introduction was that Brody completely went off-book, leading to the rumor that he got banned because of it. However, the podcast “That Week in SNL” tweeted in 2021 that this is just a false rumor. Brody reportedly did the same Jamaican persona and intro during dress rehearsal, too. So the powers that be definitely knew what he was going to do. “As stupid as it is, this was supposed to happen,” they tweeted. They followed up by saying Tina Fey apparently said Brody had “a BUNCH of awful sketch ideas” and this intro for Sean Paul was the only one to make it through.
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In a 2012 interview with HuffPost, Brody was blasé about his rumored “SNL” ban. He said he didn’t know about it and that Lorne Michaels, head honcho for “SNL,” didn’t say anything to him backstage.
