Kevin Nealon doesn’t seem to be a fan of the recent Ryan Gosling episode.

SNL alum calls out cast members who break into laughter during sketches: ‘It doesn’t work’

Kevin Nealon doesn't seem to be a fan of the recent Ryan Gosling episode.

By Derek Lawrence

Derek Lawrence

Derek Lawrence is a former associate editor at **. He left EW in 2022.

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on March 24, 2026 8:14 p.m. ET

Ashley Padilla and Ryan Gosling on 'Saturday Night Live'. Credit:

Breaking news: A longtime *Saturday Night Live* cast member is not a fan of the current group breaking during sketches.

Two weeks ago, Ryan Gosling hosted *SNL*, and the *Project Hail Mary* star couldn't hold in his laughter throughout the episode, but one sketch in particular seemed to be designed for Gosling and the cast to break character. It turns out that former "Weekend Update" anchor Kevin Nealon was not amused.

"I never broke character on *SNL*," he wrote in a X post on Tuesday. "I knew how much time the writers put into those scripts. You don’t want to be the one who throws it off. [*SNL* creator] Lorne [Michaels] doesn’t like when the cast breaks. Even if the audience laughs, it doesn't work for the sketch."

In "Passing Notes," Gosling plays a high school principal who comes into the class of one of his teachers (Ashley Padilla), and they repeatedly intercept notes being passed around by the students. Gosling and Padilla take turns reading the messages, which are all embarrassing situations that the kids have observed the principal and teacher in. When Padilla grabs the first one, a warning appeared on screen: "The contents of these notes have been changed since rehearsal." Gosling and Padilla constantly laughed their way through saying the notes out loud, and much of the rest of the cast seemed to need to cover their mouths to hide their own amusement.

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Kevin Nealon and Norm MacDonald on 'Saturday Night Live.'.

Gerry Goodstein/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty

At the show from 1986 to 1995, Nealon believes that the people at *SNL* should be capable of keeping it together in any situation, pointing to his performance in an iconic Chris Farley and Patrick Swayze dance number.

"If I could get through the Chippendales sketch," he said, "I could get through anything."

Nealon contends that Michaels hates breaking, and yet the *SNL *patriarch did allow Adam Sandler and Andy Samberg to make an entire digital short about it.

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