Call him the king of comedy, the sultan of sketch — or, as cast member Ego Nwodim has revealed she once did by mistake, “Daddy” — but Lorne Michaels will forever be the beating heart of “Saturday Night Live.”
The late-night show’s creator presided over its chaotic launch on October 11, 1975, and is gathering stars past and present for “SNL50: The Anniversary Celebration,” a three-hour show airing live on NBC and Peacock at 8 p.m. Sunday.
Now 80, Michaels still follows a night-owl schedule and is rarely seen in his office at 30 Rock before 5 p.m.
He detests being asked when he will retire, but told Page Six: “When it’s time to stop, it’s time to die.”
Even though “SNL” is now eligible for its AARP card, it still holds a unique place in America. It can enrage a sitting president, persuade the world’s richest man to guest host, and feature thoughts from the Titanic iceberg (as played by Bowen Yang in 2021).
And nothing is more American than arguing, and laughing, about politics. Michaels is insistent that the show never take a side.
“I think the whole point is, whoever is in power is probably awful,” he told Page Six of the “SNL” approach. “It can’t be, ‘I like everything you do’ — that’s dishonest.”
“SNL” has had fun at the expense of politicians since its very first days, of course. In its fourth episode, on November 8, 1975, Chevy Chase played President Gerald Ford as a bumbling figure tripping over the US flag.
Ford responded by inviting Michaels and the cast to the White House. “He couldn’t have been sweeter and nicer,” said Michaels. “We didn’t stop what we were doing … When you can’t laugh at something that’s a taboo, that’s terrifying.”
He admitted to having had some “rough moments” with Bill Clinton’s administration thanks to jokes about the then-sitting president’s liaison with intern Monica Lewinsky and his 1998 impeachment trial spurred by sexual harassment allegations.
Then there is Donald Trump, who hosted the show in 2004 before he was a politician, and during his 2015 run for office.
But Trump has called Michaels “angry and exhausted, the show even more so” and regularly taken to social media to issue withering critiques of “SNL,” which he has accused of executing “Republican hit jobs.”
(Asked if he would have Trump back on “SNL” Michaels told Page Six: “Perhaps we’re better off distanced in all ways.”)
Over the years, Trump has been played by a number of comedians — from the late Phil Hartman to Darrell Hammond (who also portrayed Bill Clinton for many years), Jason Sudeikis to Taran Killam to notorious liberal Alec Baldwin.
Cast member James Austin Johnson now commands the fake Oval Office set.
“He’s doing a really good job,” said Michaels of Johnson. “His is the Trump for now. He brings him to life.”
But Michaels also has to contend with his own cast’s biases. In the book “Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live,” out February 18, author Susan Morrison details how then-cast member Cecily Strong “was in a sulk about being asked to make fun of the Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein” in 2019.
And former star Taran Killam has publicly accused Michaels of going too soft with Trump sketches.
“It’s the hardest thing for me to explain to this generation that the show is nonpartisan,” Michaels says in the book.
“On whatever side, if there’s idiocy, we go after it,” Michaels tells his cast in the book, reminding them: “We’ve got the whole country watching … “
He also believes that humor is a release valve rather than a tool of propaganda.
“I think you can’t use TV as a medium to convince people of anything … you can show them stuff, and they can make up their own minds,” he told Page Six. “It has to be an intelligent take and it has to be funny and it can’t be a lecture, the moment you do that people start to leave.
His gut check is simple: “If it doesn’t get laughs, it doesn’t work.”
Michael well understands the need to stay current and on top of the zeitgeist — even if that means not everyone watching will be in on it all the time. He’s not on social media, but it was he who recently insisted on getting “Pink Pony Club” singer Chappell Roan to perform.
“Tom Hanks” — a close friend of Michaels who has hosted 10 times and made countless cameos — “was just here watching rehearsals and he said ‘I don’t know most of the music.’ But we have to be as close as we can [to being] of the moment.”
So he and the show has been quite nimble over the years, particularly in ushering in a new age of video sketches that have helped the show achieve social media virality — from Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell’s now-iconic “Lazy Sunday,” which boosted then-nascent YouTube’s traffic by 83% in 2005, to last November’s “Domingo” sketch with host Ariana Grande and cast member Marcello Hernández which has now surpassed 150 million views on TikTok.
“You can’t force people to watch it, they find these things,” he said of the show’s popularity on social media. “It’s also allowed us to show a legacy, a body of work, and people will put a sketch up I had forgotten about and it’s really funny — it was funny then and funny now. It’s thrilling to see the show continue to have relevance.”
But Michaels admits he does miss the days of three networks — and the power that gave shows to “create unity.”
Television “connects all 50 states and all people can see it at the same time … although this is mostly now confined to sports and to some degree, news,” he said. “but the country is now fragmented [in its viewing habits] and you can curate what you want to watch … you’re not as exposed to the things that you all experienced together.”
The corridors leading up the hallowed studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where “Saturday Night Live” has only ever been filmed, are lined with photos of the show’s history — among them, a picture of the very first cast: John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, and Dan Aykroyd.
Michaels has been reliving a flood of memories while putting together the three-hour anniversary show, thinking about cast members who are now gone — Belushi, but also Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, Chris Farley, Radner, and others.
“If you talk to anyone, from Tina [Fey] to [five-time host] Emma Stone to [current cast member] Sarah Sherman, it all started with Gilda,” he said of Radner’s lasting influence, 36 years after her death from cancer at age 42. “We were obviously very close and we did her one-woman show together on Broadway … she was the best.
“We just showed a black and white, very offbeat film that John [Belushi] starred in … and we wondered whether it would still hold up,” Michaels continued. “It still works, it still has power — and more power because it’s John and because of the way we feel about him.”
Michaels famously doesn’t laugh during aspiring cast members’ auditions, leaving many quivering in fear. But he’s known for becoming a mentor to many of them — continuing to produce outside shows for Tina Fey, Jimmy Fallon, and Seth Meyers, for example, or acting as a sort of father figure to Pete Davidson, who was cast at age 20 and, according to the book, joked about owning a locket with Michaels’ photo tucked inside.
The producer said he does feel a responsibility for his young stars’ well-being.
“They get here and, for most of them, it’s their first real job or, at least, their first real TV show — and most people aren’t prepared for money,” Michaels said. “I tell them, ‘Get an apartment you [think you] don’t deserve. If you’re going to work 14-hour days … you need somewhere to be happy.’”
Doing a live show for 46 years — Michaels left in 1980 and returned in 1985 — doesn’t always allow time for perspective on legacy, though.
“I think it’s impossible to take it all in, but every now and then something affects me. It’s easier to focus on what we’re doing now and making sure things are as good as they can be, and then afterwards you can appreciate it … possibly!
