To the average television viewer, it may sometimes look like movie stars and television stars seemingly waltz into any studio set they choose, smile big, give a few fist bumps and score some extra air time. The audience always seems to enjoy the surprise cameo, as do the performers, who often are fans themselves. And of course, Mr. or Ms. Superstar are certain to love the attention and fun of being on a show once in a while without having to commit to the grind or the contractual obligations of being a regular cast member.
Here are fifteen of our favorites:
Though some sort of surprise celebrity cameo is part of the formula on almost every episode of SNL, this one stands out as being particularly noteworthy. The former Alaska governor with the mysterious Midwest twang surprised much of America when she was nominated as the presidential running mate alongside John McCain.
Early efforts to introduce the possible VP to the American voting public weren’t all that successful, such as the disastrous interview with Katie Couric where Palin discussed being able to see Russia from her house and how she really doesn’t like to read.
So SNL thought it would be fun to try to show her funny side – or at least that she could take a joke — by pairing her up with Tina Fey, who had perfected a dead-on Palin imitation. And this was made part of the joke, when producer Lorne Michaels pretended that he couldn’t tell the difference between Fey’s fake Sarah and the real deal. Did it work? Maybe a little.
She still seemed a little stiff and scripted, and the GOP ticket ended up losing big that year, but she did get a few points for giving comedy the ol’ college try.
What happens when you make promises you can’t deliver on? In high school in 1971, all sorts of unthinkable social pressures can take place. Marcia finds this out when she promises her school that she, as the local president of the Davy Jones Fan Club, will convince The Monkees frontman to play the school dance.
Marcia Marcia Marcia, always the optimist, tries to track him down everywhere and the family also tries to help out. When she finally does get to see him in person, it turns out that he’s stuck in a soundproof recording booth and all he could see was her saying something.
In the end, the high schoolers seem to get over Marcia’s plans falling through, and Davy eventually hears the news and rushes over with an early release of his new album – he’s too late for the dance but Marcia digs having a sneak peek at that new album. Holy product placement before we knew what that was!
In a fun twist, the plotline was resurrected in “The Brady Bunch Movie” in 1995, but in this case, Davy Jones surprises everyone by showing up to the dance, an appearance which makes the older teachers swoon and the younger, rock-loving punks scratch their heads wondering who that old guy was.
Cos and his television family made a lot of us laugh, and also think about stuff, but not necessarily in ‘very special’ ways like some of the shows from around that time. The Huxtables weren’t crude or cruel to each other like other television families at the time, and they always took time to tell each other they were special. One of the episodes took the family to the studio of the famous musician Stevie Wonder.
Not just satisfied with playing them some of his wonderful compositions, the Motown great sampled all of the family’s favorite phrases and set them to music.
It’s a sign of the times that today’s amateur musicians know what sampling is, but in the mid-1980s the style of making a voice track as a piece of music was definitely something on the far side of hip-hop’s cutting edge. Questlove, the famous producer and drummer, credited this moment on television with inspiring a whole generation of electronic musicians and producers.
In his book, Mo Meta Blues, he said Stevie’s innovative method of laying down the voice loops and combining them with a good beat has become a staple of electronica and DJ music.
This appearance was kept under wraps for years, partly because the show was so new, and partly because of MJ’s own eccentricities; in the commentary for the Stark Raving Dad episode, creator James L. Brooks said Jackson requested to be on the show, but with a whole lot of conditions, including that he not be credited, and that any singing be done by someone else.
Brooks said Jackson thought this would be a fun gag to see if his brothers could detect if the singing was truly Michael or a good imitator. The episode’s story revolved around Homer being committed to a mental institution and meeting a man who claims to be Michael Jackson. Homer, not being familiar with current culture, takes him at his word and then brings him home to meet his family.
The Jackson character helps Bart write a birthday song for his sister Lisa. Following this appearance, the show required that all celebrity actors either play themselves or at least allow their voices to be credited, such as Johnny Cash, who played the voice of a talking fox, but not himself.
The show’s writers later also made various in-joke references to this quasi-secret appearance, like years later when Lisa is describing all the characters in the Itchy and Scratchy Movie including Michael Jackson: “they didn’t say, but you could tell.”
After Jackson’s death, the show staff finally admitted what many believed for so long: that John Jay Smith was a pseudonym.
Following the original cancelation of Star Trek, Nimoy once wrote a book he called I Am Not Spock, referring to all the interesting non-Vulcan parts of his personality. Decades later he wrote a book called I am Spock where he finally concluded that the character is more like an important part of his persona so he may as well reconcile this part with his characteristic good humor.
Though he has a distinctive appearance and voice, he has had no shortage of acting and voice work in television and film, including playing himself or parodies of himself on more than one episode of The Simpsons.
In Futurama, he also had a few guest spots. One showed him in the Head Museum, a spot where famous heads of the past are kept alive in jars. When a character asked him to “do that thing with his hand” he refuses; rather than saying he doesn’t have hands anymore, he simply said he just doesn’t do it. Another episode reunited him with other cast members who are captured by an alien fanboy on an alien world. At first it seems like paradise, but, as in just about every Star Trek episode, there’s always some kind of deal-breaker. Futurama producers also required that anyone who is a celebrity guest be a head.
This NBC sit-com about the funny things that take place in the fashion magazine publishing world didn’t last all that long, but had one particularly memorable moment where Mark Hamill tried to turn the tables on a super Star Wars fan, played by David Spade. When their paths crossed at a restaurant, Spade went nuts and started bothering Hamill excessively. And who wouldn’t? It’s Luke Skywalker, who blew up one Death Star and got a big assist for Number Two. Hamill brushes him off rudely, but later stops by his work to apologize for the outburst.
Once Spade starts continuing with the fan treatment, Hamill decides to try to show him what life is like for someone who is famous for something they did decades ago and no longer has any privacy. He asks Spade detailed, repetitive, and intricate questions about his job thirty years earlier, when he worked at an ice cream parlor, and even brought ice cream by to try to trigger some old memories. He records an outgoing voice message saying Mark and David aren’t home. He stops by every day just to look at Spade and giggle like a starstruck fan.
It’s all to teach Spade a lesson about respecting celebrity boundaries. Of course, it doesn’t take so well, and Spade simply loves the personal attention from Luke.
Nothing will beat the former NBA all-star’s appearance as an incognito pilot named Roger Murdock in Airplane, but the episode called Air Jesse came pretty close. When the girls organize a basketball game for charity, they invite all their friends and family to play, and assume that Uncle Jesse, who is so good at so much else, also has game.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t want to tell anyone that he’s sorely lacking in this area, so he has to do some quick maneuvering to find a way to learn at least the basics of ball handling.
He finds a mentor of sorts in the lanky Kareem, whose son happens to be playing in the tournament. In addition to showing Jesse the ropes of basketball, including the famous Skyhook move, the great player from the Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers threw in some other life lessons and words of advice for Jesse as a bonus, not unlike the insightful neighbor on the other side of the fence in Home Improvement. Remember, this was back in 1995, when we still looked up to our sports stars as great keepers of wisdom and generally good role models.
The former Mrs. Bono always seems willing to poke fun at herself and loves the camera. And the camera still loves her, even as the years pass by. Heck, she was co-hosting a variety show years before the kids on this groundbreaking lifestyle show about platonic roommates were even born. And she sang with Beavis and Butt-head, something that few performers have done, and even fewer will admit to doing.
In the 2000 episode, entitled Gypsies, Tramps and Weed, the catty Jack runs into her but initially thinks she’s just a pretty good-looking drag queen, but not quite his favorite entertainer. Even though she tries to convince him that she’s the real deal, he continues to believe that she’s just playing a part well and is having a hard time getting out of character. She even sings If I Can Turn Back Time, one of her anthems, to show him, but he’s still not convinced. But at least he thinks she has a bit of potential as a singer, so he nicely offers some pointers to the person he’s dubbed Mister Sister, and shows her how the song really should be performed by someone pretending to be Cher. Then she slapped Jack, which seemed to do the trick. This episode also included a bit of subtle product placement; Jack had a Cher doll with him in the episode, which NBC conveniently sold to the public.
Nixon had a lot of firsts, for better or worse. He resigned his office, yes, but he also started the Environmental Protection Agency, a topic that good Republicans wouldn’t touch today. He improved America’s relations with China, and was the first US presidential candidate to appear on a comedy program. The show at the time was Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, a comedy/variety show in the late 1960s that offered with music, sketches, and bad jokes aplenty. Lily Tomlin and Goldie Hawn were some of the stars who earned plenty of laughs here.
But in a definite non-Equity moment, the prospective leader of the free world uttered the words Sock it to me during an episode in September of 1968.
Also noteworthy was that he wasn’t hit by a pie, or had water dumped on him, or any other unfortunate perils that sometimes befall guest stars. His appearance was only a few months away from the election in November, so perhaps this moment showed him as a funny guy, or at least someone who earnestly tries. Nixon ended up winning the election, and show creator George Schlatter credited his victory with his appearance on the show. To be fair, the show’s producers offered the same opportunity to his Democratic opponent Hubert Humphrey, which he declined.
Interestingly, Schlatter said that Humphrey told him he later regretted this decision, and said it may have actually cost him the election.
When America’s First Lady was looking for ways to get the word out to kids and parents that she’s now a champion in the country’s war on drugs, how did she do it? By bringing her message to one of the hit television shows of 1983 that pretty much coined the phrase “very special episode”.
The particular plot for her appearance tied in perfectly with her anti-drug message. Gary Coleman’s character Arnold, as a reporter for the school paper, gets a big scoop that drugs are being sold on school grounds.
Writing and publishing this expose creates all sorts of ethical challenges for his usual pro-establishment publication, but his noble journalistic efforts attract the attention of Nancy Reagan, who stops by the school to applaud him for his courage. She then outlines her Just Say No campaign and warns the rest of the young viewers that drugs are bad news: they can harm or kill, and users can also face much harsher penalties than a negative write-up in the local paper.
The show was actually one of the first of its kind to blend humor with topical, grittier plot lines showing the very negative consequences of common teen behavior like drunk driving, hitchhiking, epilepsy, eating disorders, and going places with strangers.
Just because he’s possibly the smartest living man in the universe, or at least this side of any black holes, Professor Hawking can still take time to get some laughs. And that people who can’t physically speak can still deliver some great lines. He’s played himself in a few episodes of Futurama, but his real fame came on The Big Bang Theory as one of a few physicists who may be smarter than the main character, Dr. Sheldon Cooper. Though the whole ensemble of science geeks admires him, Howard is the one who gets a job with his staff, to which Sheldon offers anything for the chance for Howard to show Hawking his research paper.
When they finally do meet, Hawking said he’s impressed at the science but disappointed that at the math error. Some great verbal fencing going on, with the perfectionist Sheldon trying to either acknowledge that he may have made a mistake, or that his scientific idol made a mistake. Finally, he faints, taking care of the dilemma.
Hawking’s voice appeared on another episode as well, when he accepts Sheldon’s invitation to play Words With Friends with him. Sheldon takes this simple yes-button pushing as the sign of true friendship with Hawking, something that has been a goal since he was a child.
Ask your parents or grandparents (great grandparents perhaps?) about what kind of a scary guy Vincent Price used to be, way back in the day. In the 1950s and 1960s, you couldn’t throw a spooky movie together about mummy’s curses or vampire wax museums or werewolves of terror, or any other sort of creepy combos in early horror movies and shows, without him having some part of it.
His deadpan, dreary voice combined with his corpse-like pallor and sharp wit became the stuff of bad guy or just weird guy legends. You can also hear a bit of his material on Michael Jackson’s Thriller video and song.
But when Kermit The Frog called, or rather Jim Henson, and invited Price to appear at the Muppet Theater, he couldn’t resist the opportunity to try something new: working with cheery puppets. Since classic horror wouldn’t be belong with the family-friendly nature of The Muppet Show, Price decided to venture outside of his creepy comfort zone by singing the warm James Taylor ballad You’ve Got a Friend. And, since you can’t have Vincent Price without a touch of the macabre, there were lots of ghosts, flying skulls, and comedic monsters floating around trying to get his attention while he was trying his hardest to sing this inspiring song about the power of loyalty and friendship.
Billy Dee Williams has created plenty of memorable roles over a long and distinguished film and television career. But sometimes he’s at his best when he’s just playing Billy Dee himself. On this long-running medical comedy, Carla, a nurse, is engaged to Turk, a resident physician, at the same hospital.
During the Her Story II episode, she introduces her godfather to the Turk and the rest of the crew. In her eyes, he’s just a normal friendly guy who has been supportive for her and her family over the years. But, to Turk and everyone around him, he’s that ultra-smooth Billy Dee Williams guy! When Williams first walks in, Turk shouts Lando!, to which Billy Dee offers a better suggestion: how about just calling him Billy Dee? The gag continues for much of the episode, where Turk refuses to call him anything but Lando, no matter how much he politely insists.
A few years later, Billy Dee did embrace his inner Calrissian on an appearance on Robot Chicken, when he forwarded the argument that Lando had to make a tough call, and sacrificed one scoundrel for the good of thousands of citizens.
Tom Hanks is one of those stars who are big enough to go anywhere they choose; call him the Bob Hope of our day. Any television show would love him to pop in announced or unannounced, and whether he’s pushing a movie or just stopping by to say hi, the viewers are sure to go crazy. On The Colbert Report, for instance, he showed up to help Stephen send supplies to the troops, and then on another occasion, told Stephen some great Halloween costume ideas that just so happened to be from his hit new film.
But one of America’s favorite drop-by appearances took place on a show that already was accustomed to celebrities dropping by on a regular basis: 30 Rock, a program that shows the backstage antics of a SNL-type weekly variety show. On the episode’s hundredth episode, it showed Hanks watching the show from home while doing something that resembles crochet. When a bit by Tracy Morgan came on, he apparently didn’t like it one bit and called up fellow superstar George Clooney, requesting that George please remove Morgan from the official Hollywood A-list. Because you know real stars have a list.
First time was the charm for this hit show about kids who looooove to sing more than anything else in the world. For a fun episode in Season 2, the class decides to do an all adult contemporary theme. The kids suggest Britney Spears, partly because she was so popular way back in 2010, and that Heather Morris’ Brittany character feels a certain kinship to her. Eventually they talk Will into doing the edgier numbers.
There’s also a subplot about good dental hygiene, featuring John Stamos as Emma’s dentist boyfriend. Brittany and Santana end up at the dentist’s office getting some gas. First they sing Britney duets together, then all of a sudden have make-believe conversations with the real Ms. Spears. Others hear about this magical gas and try to have their own hallucinogenic musical experiences. After some crazy assemblies but great singing, they decide the school really isn’t ready for Britney yet.
Interestingly, they revisit the theme two years later, this time without the cameo. And even worse, Spears publicly said she didn’t care for the second episode, which was less about her newer music and more about her well-publicized breakdowns like the head shaving and hitting things with umbrellas.
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