We could have seen Robin Williams in a Church Lady skit if Dana Carvey had accepted his invitation for a special appearance. Back in 1986, Carvey debuted the Church Lady character during his first season on Saturday Night Live. The character was a big hit with viewers, leading to the "Church Chat" sketches featuring Carvey's Church Lady becoming a recurring segment. Carvey would even reprise the role when returning to SNL as a guest host in the years following his exit as a full-time cast member.

Per THR, Carvey shared a story about how Williams could have been a part of one of the Church Lady sketches for his Fly on the Wall podcast with David Spade. He says how Williams was a great friend of his, but when the Mork & Mindy star asked to come in as a guest for a "Church Chat" segment on SNL, Carvey couldn't do it. He was apparently afraid that Williams' high energy would end up overshadowing the Church Lady, as Carvey explains:

“He was a really good friend, but he really wanted to do ‘Church Chat'. And this was in the early days, this was my golden ticket and I was very careful. I thought if Robin got so excited…I was just afraid of it.”

Later on, when Carvey was returning to SNL as guest host, Williams had again pitched to join him as a guest on "Church Chat." Even then, Carvey was still uncomfortable with the cameo, admitting that it was "heartbreaking" to tell Williams he couldn't do it. Carvey seemingly just couldn't shake the feeling that an appearance from Williams would take away from the sketch as a whole.

“It was heartbreaking, but you know we got past that and we were [friends]. But in those days, your thing [character] was very precious. I wanted to keep it quasi-real, in a sense.”

Related: Kenan Thompson Recalls Landing Robin Williams for Surprise SNL Spot: 'He Was Just an Angel'

All It Took Was Asking to Get Robin Williams to Appear on SNL for Kenan Thompson

Williams previously served as a guest host on multiple occasions in the 1980s, but he then went many years without appearing on Saturday Night Live. That changed in 2010 when he popped up unannounced in one of Kenan Thompson's "What Up With That?" sketches. Thompson recently explained how that cameo came to be, revealing that it was incredibly easy to make happen. All he had to do was ask Williams, who was happy to be a part of it.

"I went and talked — I didn't even finish my sentence — he was just like, 'Absolutely,'" Thompson explained on the Fly on the Wall podcast. "He was just an angel. That was crazy."

Williams must have been a fan of the series, as there are other stories of the actor trying to get involved with SNL. Last year, former cast member Bobby Moynihan said Williams approached him with the idea of pranking the SNL team by having Williams "pretend" to be Moynihan on his first day of work. However, Williams didn't follow through with the hoax, much to Moynihan's delight.