The Chaotic Bill Hader And Justin Bieber SNL Sketch You Didn't Get To See

During Bill Hader's tenure on Saturday Night Live, some of his sketches didn't make it to air; however, few were as chaotic as one he staged alongside pop star Justin Bieber.

Fans of the long-running late night show know that between the dress rehearsal and the taped live show, some sketches fall by the wayside. In fact, former SNL head writer and Weekend Update host Seth Meyers, who now hosts NBC's Late Night with Seth Meyers, hosts a recurring segment on his show called "Second Chance Theater," which features other SNL alumni performing sketches that never made it onto the show for one reason or another... though it's usually because they're not particularly funny, a fact Meyers and his friends are always ready to admit.

However, as Hader and Meyers discussed on a recent Late Night interview, one of Hader's rejected sketches faced a number of weird hurdles, including a totally unresponsive audience and a set that almost injured Bieber. Here's the story of the totally chaotic Bill Hader and Justin Bieber sketch that fans never got to see.

In the Late Night segment, Meyers brought up Second Chance Theater, specifically invoking a sketch called "Song for Daddy" about an old cowboy written by former SNL writers John Solomon and Rob Klein. Hader immediately started laughing, telling Meyers, "'Song for Daddy' was [with] Justin Bieber, and that sketch only went to dress, and everything that could possibly go wrong in a sketch went wrong with that sketch. Immediately, I think the set almost fell on Justin Bieber, and then I tried to make it a part of the sketch or something, and I remember none of the props I was supposed to have were there, and it just went terrible."

Meyers, who worked on the show at the time, provided even more context, specifically about the truly weird audience: "It was also the height of 'Bieber fever,' and I think in those days — probably now too — when you have dress rehearsal, sometimes that's when NBC executives pull tickets for their kids, and so it was a way younger crowd, and they were just there because they loved him, and the sketch started and immediately the set almost fell on him, and people gasped."

"It's an old, grizzled cowboy singing a song about his daddy, and I remember getting up there and seeing the crowd and Fred Armisen was playing the drummer, and Fred was like, 'there's a lot of young kids here,'" Hader continued, still chuckling. "And I was just like, 'Oh, we're screwed! This isn't gonna play.' And just seeing John Solomon just int he audience pleasantly looking at me, just knowing, like, I was in front of a firing squad.

Meyers promised Hader the sketch would be performed on Second Chance Theater someday in front of an audience of "grizzled cowboys," since the two agreed that's who the sketch is "really for," so maybe one day fans will be able to see this sketch without Bieber or the threat of injury. Both Late Night and Saturday Night Live are available to watch on Hulu and Peacock.