Jason Bateman<\/a> was the host and there was a monkey in the sketch…<\/p>\n“I don’t like them. It’s too stressful for me. And it was a young chimpanzee.<\/p>\n
“I walked past the chimpanzee and it reached out and grabbed me by the wrist and wouldn’t let go in the middle of a quick change. <\/p>\n
\n“I think it was the blonde hair or my vibe. And I started screaming. And chimpanzees are very strong.<\/p>\n
\n “I couldn’t get it to let go of me.”<\/p>\n
\nFortunately for Amy, “it was all fine” eventually.<\/p>\n
\nAmy made a brief appearance as Sharon Stone in 2005 sketch Monkeys Throwing Poop at Celebrities, which featured Jason Bateman as an eccentric TV host who tricked Sean Connery (Darrell Hammond) into sitting for an interview which ended with a chimp throwing excrement at him.<\/p>\n
\nAnd when he returned to host SNL in 2020, Ozark actor Jason recalled how Mikey “tried to kill” him and bit his face.<\/p>\n
\nHe said: “Things were so loose that at the end of the show, at goodnights, the monkey was allowed to take a bow with us up here.<\/p>\n
\n“We’re all hugging, we’re saying goodnight, the credits are rolling, and then the monkey tried to kill me. Truly, I bent down to say, ‘Good job’ to the monkey. You know, bein’ nice. I’m a nice fella. But not the chimp. The chimp unhinges his jaw, he flashes the teeth, and he tries to bite my entire nose off.<\/p>\n
\n“Apparently this is a thing with chimps, I guess. They hate that humans have faces, and they wanna remove them. I don’t know. Maybe he got a good look at this nose and thought I wasn’t gonna miss half of it.”<\/p>\n
\nBut Jason was stunned to learn the chimp “wanted to apologise” afterwards and seemed to show genuine remorse.<\/p>\n
\nHe said: “I survived, and after the show, I was told by the animal handlers that Mikey, the monkey, wanted to apologise, truly.<\/p>\n
\n“My first thought was that this is a trap, he wants more, he’s still snacky. But I decided that everyone deserves a second chance.”<\/p>\n
\nOf visiting Mikey in his dressing room after the show, he added: “He’s looking very ashamed of himself, and honest to God, he shuffles over to me, puts his hand up on my shoulder, as if to say, ‘I’m sorry.’<\/p>\n
\n“It was a very, very beautiful moment. It was a connection between man and nature that I will never, ever, ever forget.”<\/p>\n
\nHe then jokingly added: “The monkey was destroyed later that night. It was my choice. Lessons have to be learned. But I would like to think that if he was here with us tonight to see me host 15 years later, he would probably rip my nuts off.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"19 November 2025 Amy Poehler started “screaming” after being grabbed by a chimp who refused to let go of her arm. Amy Poehler was terrified by a chimp The Parks and Recreation star was left terrified by the experience with the “formidable” creature named Mikey backstage on Saturday Night Live and admitted she finds it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":206324,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[8296,1144],"class_list":{"0":"post-206323","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-make-up","8":"tag-amy-poehler","9":"tag-jason-bateman"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}