For almost 50 years, "Saturday Night Live" has been run by the steady hand of its creator, Lorne Michaels. Save for a period of time when he left the series in the 1980s, the Canadian comedy mogul has been at the head of this landmark NBC program, and continues to do so throughout the 2025 TV schedule. That being said, I imagine it would surprise the world to learn that there was a point when the network tried to replace Michaels, and an equally stunning candidate was apparently among the prospective hires.
On behalf of the 50th anniversary of "SNL," and the release of the new book Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live, I reached out to author Susan Morrison to discuss the tome in question. When asking her about what she felt were the most surprising stories in the book, both of her answers had to do with Lorne Michaels’ very stewardship. One story was about how the father of "Saturday Night Live" almost didn’t do the show, simply because he didn’t want to do it in New York.
On behalf of the 50th anniversary of "SNL," and the release of the new book Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live, I reached out to author Susan Morrison to discuss the tome in question. When asking her about what she felt were the most surprising stories in the book, both of her answers had to do with Lorne Michaels’ very stewardship. One story was about how the father of "Saturday Night Live" almost didn’t do the show, simply because he didn’t want to do it in New York.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00Most of the things that I didn't know were things that didn't have to do with the show, like the things before the show.
00:06Well, okay, I'll give you two examples.
00:08One thing that really surprised me, and it's a part of the book that I loved writing,
00:13is that after pitching this show in Hollywood for years, he finally was offered, NBC said,
00:19come to New York and you could do this show.
00:21And he almost said no.
00:23He came really close to saying no because he didn't want to leave Los Angeles.
00:27He was really comfortable in California by then.
00:29He loved the beach and he loved the desert.
00:33And he thought that New York was pretentious.
00:36It was also, in 1975, really unsafe.
00:40It was a mess.
00:41It was declaring bankruptcy.
00:43Murders and burglaries were up.
00:46That was the era of taxi driver and escape from New York.
00:50So he was thinking, gee, I kind of like California.
00:54And another thing about that whole discussion that I think is interesting is he started,
01:00and I think coming from Canada, right, where it's cold and boring,
01:03he liked the fact that he always says that California invented the idea of fun as a value not to be ashamed of.
01:12You know, that in California you could read Chekhov and go see an Elvis movie,
01:17and that didn't mean that you weren't a serious person.
01:20And he said, you know, people in New York basically just wanted to go into the basement
01:24and read the Tibetan Book of the Dead, you know.
01:27So he thought it was a sort of pretentious, superior culture,
01:33and he didn't really want anything to do with it.
01:35So he almost said no.
01:37And if he had said no, the show wouldn't have happened.
01:41And then I guess another thing that I didn't know at all,
01:45I mean, I did know that in the 90s he tussled with the network and with Don Ulmeier,
01:51and they made him fire Farley and Sandler.
01:56But I didn't know that the network had gone so far as to interview people to maybe replace him.
02:03You know, I didn't know that they had reached out to Judd Apatow, who was just in his 20s,
02:08and had these kind of, you know, very vague conversations with him about, you know,
02:15maybe coming in in a producer role, and who knows what would happen next.
02:20Because they were really thinking of firing Lorne.
02:23And, you know, Judd loved the show.
02:27It was always his dream to work at the show, and Sandler was his roommate.
02:32So, you know, he knew the show well.
02:35And so he was intrigued, but he was so put off by the sneaky back-channel behavior of these guys
02:42that I think he felt that karmically it would just be so wrong and so disrespectful of Lorne
02:48and what Lorne had created that he told them, forget it.
02:52But I don't think anyone, I mean, I don't think it's widely known that he was really on the ropes there.