For actress Victoria Jackson, her time on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE was a God-given “mission field.”
“I remember walking down the hall and thinking this is my mission field,” she recalled. “So I tried to witness to the cast when I got the opportunity.”
Jackson joined SNL at 27 years old and appeared as a regular member from 1986 to 1992, alongside Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Jon Lovitz, Dennis Miller, Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, David Spade, Nora Dunn, and Jan Hooks, ChurchLeaders reported.
Her faith impacted her work, and she one time told creator Lorne Michaels she wouldn’t participate in a sketch because it was “blasphemous.”
“There were things that I shouldn’t have done that I did do,” she admitted, saying she feared getting fired. “But I tried hard to make [the right ones].”
Jackson didn’t shy away from hot-button topics. When the cast discussed a skit about homosexuality, she pulled out her Bible and read Romans 1.
“I was listening to them and there was a Bible on the shelf at SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE and then it came into my brain Romans 1, and I thought they probably know I’m a Christian and they probably think I’m standing here prudishly thinking, ‘Oh, gay is a sin,’” she recalled. “And I said, ‘So I should read them Romans 1 and show them that it’s just a sin like all the other sins like gossip.’”
Jackson continued, “And so I said, ‘Hey guys, this is what the Bible says about homosexuality.’ And I started reading that verse that has gossip in the same paragraph with homosexuality and murder…yeah, it’s a sin, but we all have sins.”
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“So they were all speechless and everything froze in time and then I just went, ‘Oh well,’ and I put the Bible back and left the room,” Jackson said. “I guess the Holy Spirit prompted me.”
For Christmas one year, she bought her castmates a Bible on cassette as a way to share the gospel and “all of the treasures I know in the Bible.”
Now decades after her SNL run, Jackson’s faith still keeps her strong, especially amid her terminal cancer diagnosis.
In August 2024, she announced that she has less than three years left to live.
“Update on the cancer: they cannot operate and cut out the marble in my chest that is laying on my windpipe and eventually would suffocate me to death,” Jackson said at the time.
So, she got down to business and wrote a book titled NOT DEAD YET: A Lifetime of Handstands, Art & Poetry.
“I saw it online on a T-shirt, and it made me laugh,” Jackson said of the phrase “not dead yet” in an interview. “I wore it a lot to lessen the discomfort of my friends and neighbors who didn’t know what to say. Then I started thinking more about the meaning of the phrase and realized I will never be dead, because Christ defeated death. So it has about three meanings: the mental, carnal one people use; the physical, cancer-related one; and the spiritual one.”
Ultimately, she hopes her life and book point people to Christ.
“My main purpose was to point people to Jesus Christ our Savior and to His Word. His Word has the answer to everything at every stage of our lives,” Jackson emphasized. “Romans 8:28-since all things work together for our good, those of us who serve Him can pass through any trial with joy and peace and count our trials a blessing. James 1:2-4.”
Praise God for how Jackson uses her talents to share the gospel.
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