“When I was on SNL, I was a bit of a basket case,” he told Variety in 2019. “It could not have been easy on my wife at the time. I was so consumed with work and anxiety. Sometimes I felt like people thought, ‘Oh, he’s just wanting attention or something.’ It was like, ‘No, man, I’m legit. I’m freaking out right now.’”

Even after leaving the show, the stressful memories kept Hader—who shares daughters Hannah, 15, Harper, 12, and Hayley, 10, with Carey—from revisiting his past sketches.

“I never saw any of the stuff I did,” he continued. “I think a nanny showed my kids Stefon, or 'The Californians' or something. They came in and were like, ‘Dad, look at this.’ I was like, ‘Oh, yeah. There I am.’”

But while Hader was certainly missed, he wasn’t the only former cast member absent from SNL’s birthday celebration. Inaugural cast member Dan Aykroyd was also missing from the night’s crowd, though he gave a shout out two days prior. 

"Cracking a Head with pride at having been a co-founder of SNL along with everyone we were together with in those four years, five decades ago," he wrote on X (formerly Twitter) Feb. 14. "This telecast is as historical as the next moon landing. Comedy stars of our age all gathered under the aegis of America’s greatest living impresario, my boss Lorne Michaels. People it’s friggin’ Holy!!"

Though Hader and Aykroyd weren’t present, read on to see all the stars that attended SNL 50: The Anniversary Special.

(E! and Saturday Night Live are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)