SNL Creator Lorne Michaels Eyes His Retirement with the Show’s 50th Anniversary

Since TV started airing in living rooms around the nation, the word legend has been thrown around for numerous talents. However, the list becomes dramatically shorter when the definition requires having molded the culture, being responsible for launching countless careers and spanning nearly 50 years proving your finger is on the pulse of an international audience. Lorne Michaels is on that list. Recently he treated CBS Mornings‘ Gayle King to a tour of the famous Studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza and shared some thoughts on passing the Satuday Night Live torch.

He spoke of the concepts he wanted to incorporate into his 1975 sketch show from the beginning. “It was gonna have music, it was gonna have news, it was gonna have pretty much the format that we have,” he said. “It’s been reinvented many times. It’d be topical, ’cause it’s live. And for me, live, I’d done theatre, but I’d never done live television. But live meant no pilot, you know, so that the audience would see it at the same time we would see it.”

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Speaking of the impact on the cast’s carreers, “I think it really, for the first time, really hit me on the 40th anniversary,” said Michaels, “just seeing all the generations of the show. You can’t put anyone in the cast that you don’t have complete faith in. You may not know how it’ll turn out, but you want that decision to have been pure of heart.”

And answering the question that has been a hot topic for quite some time, he responds to the question of the existence of a line in comedy that shouldn’t be crossed. “I think it’s up to the writer or the performer to figure out how to do it. There are lots of things that when you hear the idea, sounds awful. But if they can do, I don’t think anything’s out of bounds, is what I’m saying, if there’s enough talent to figure out how to get it across.”

When he’s not running the 100 miles an hour bullet train live show, he busies himelf producing and executively producing such hits as The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Late Night With Seth Meyers, 30 Rock, Portlandia, MacGruber (both the film and the series), The Kids in the Hall (both the series and the upcoming reboot), Tommy Boy, Coneheads, The Three Amigos, Wayne’s World…

Listing the talented folks whose careers sky-rocketed after their turns on SNL is something left to the SNL historian, and the tale would be released in volumes akin to The Encyclopedia Britannica. But the list for successors to the throne might be counted on one hand. While Lorne Michaels wouldn’t give a hint, he did say he had some ideas. One would think a writer who has a complete understanding of the voice of the program and has worked under his wing might be on that list. TIna Fey? Conan O’Brien? Kenan Thompson? John Mulaney? Whoever it might be, those will be some gargantuan loafers to fill.

Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels along with operatic bass-baritone Justino Díaz, Motown founder, songwriter, producer, and director Berry Gordy, legendary stage and screen icon Bette Midler and singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell will be the honorees at The 44th Annual Kennedy Center Honors for the Performing Arts for lifetime artistic achievements, airing Wednesday December 22 on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.

About The Author

Brandy Lynn Sebren
(505 Articles Published)

I’m the one that speaks in random movie dialogue. I almost always miss contact on high-fives. For years, I have been writing, speaking at length, and thanking the gods that my shocking encyclopedic knowledge of music, film and TV has proven valuable. Most commonly asked question? “Why do you know that?”

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