Long before he was Iron Man for Marvel, Robert Downey Jr. had a brief stint on Saturday Night Live, but only lasted a single season before departing. Having been on TV for over 40 years at this point, it's hard to imagine a time when Saturday Night Live might've faced cancellation. SNL is so synonymous with the NBC brand that Saturday nights would just feel wrong without the Peacock network airing it. SNL has its ups and downs as the years go by, but usually seems to find its way back to pop culture prominence.
Producers aren't necessarily the most well-known members of a show's creative staff, but in SNL's case, executive producer and showrunner Lorne Michaels is just as synonymous with his greatest creation as the show itself is with NBC. It seems like he's been in charge forever, and he almost has, outside of a short stretch in the 1980s in which Michaels was absent.
Michaels had only wanted to take a year off due to being burned out, and for the show to go on hiatus with him, but NBC refused the latter request, replacing him as showrunner and continuing on. This led Michaels to leave entirely, and take most of the existing cast with him. This first replacement flamed out fast, leading Dick Ebersol — who developed the concept with Michaels — to take over. This period was highly tumultuous, leading to lots of cast turnover, either by choice or by firing. In 1985, Michaels returned to power, resulting in yet another all-new cast, one member of which was a young Robert Downey Jr.
Since Saturday Night Live was floundering post-Ebersol, Michaels made the decision to try and do something unusual, hiring a bunch of up-and-coming actors who weren't necessarily comedians to fill out the cast. In addition to Downey, this group included Joan Cusack, Randy Quaid, and Anthony Michael Hall, who at 17 was and still is SNL's youngest-ever cast member. While these rising stars did have some able comedians around them, such as Dennis Miller and Jon Lovitz, the 1985-1986 season of Saturday Night Live was an utter flop. Ratings dropped off a cliff, and reviews were also quite bad.
After the season ended, NBC executives even considered pulling the plug on Saturday Night Live for good, but Michaels was able to convince them to give him another chance, promising he would draft yet another new cast that was a better fit going forward. To that end, nearly every member of the existing cast was let go after only one season, including Downey. The only regulars to remain onboard were Lovitz, Miller, and Nora Dunn. For his part, Downey has said that while he has fond memories of his brief time before he was fired from Saturday Night Live, he quickly discovered that he was "ill-suited" for the gig, and that fast-paced sketch comedy just wasn't a strength of his. Thankfully, things turned out well for him anyway.