Inside Late Night with Mark Malkoff - Inside Late Night: Susan Morrison

Episode Date: April 21, 2026

With Morgan Neville’s new documentary about Lorne Michaels now in theaters, his biographer Susan Morrison returns with fresh revelations and perspective on the SNL creator.

From late-nighter.com, it's Inside Late Night with Mark Malkoff. Welcome to Inside Late Night. I am Mark Malkoff. Today, Lorne biographer Susan Morrison of the New Yorker returns to the podcast. Susan Morrison, nice to see you again. Nice to see you. Nice to have to come back. I absolutely loved your book. We talked about it the last time, the last time I was here, I recommended it to everybody. I thought I knew a lot about Lorne Michaels. Bill Carter obviously knew Lauren from the 70s and he was blown away. So lots of things to talk about. First of all, one thing I forgot to ask you the last time, when did Lauren get ownership of Saturday Night Live? And how did that possibly come about? Do you know about what you're? Well, it's not a simple answer. But it begins with this. He started the show, you know, in 1975. And I think it never. really occurred to him that because NBC had brought the idea to him, that he didn't have any, he didn't really know about intellectual property. It was kind of as, you know, greenhorned Lauren Lipowitz

from Toronto, right? And in a funny way, I'm surprised he didn't get more and more complete guidance from Bernie Brilstein in this matter. Because after the first five years, I mean, he told me his story, Buck Henry told me this too, that he said to Lauren, okay, so you've walked away from the show, what piece of it do you own? What do you get out of it? What's your end? And Lauren, to his kind of embarrassment, just said, nothing. You know, he never thought about it. He somehow had this idea that it was his baby, it was his brainchild, but he had never negotiated for anything. So that stuck in his craw.

And, you know, especially as so many of the stars from those years, Belushi and Akroyd, you know, they started making movies like Animal House and getting rich. And, you know, Lauren wasn't seeing a dime from this. And he also didn't get that fun feeling of glory. So I'd say when he came back in 85, he had brought on a Broadway video, a young Harvard Business School guy named Eric Ellen Bogan, who was really smart about all kinds of business things, in particular issues of intellectual property. He's the one who had Lauren investing in, you know, the Rudolph, the Red Nose, reindeer, animated,

you know, animation shows and everything, which made Lauren his first gazillions of dollars when they sold it to Golden Books. But anyway, Eric Ellen Bogan, with some of Lauren's other money people, began this series of just clawing various rights back from NBC, sometimes merchandising rights, sometimes distribution rights in foreign markets. I mean, it had kind of changed year to year. When the show did well, they were in a position to get more rights back. And, you know, so by the end, by like the time of the 40th, he was owned. a big chunk of it. I mean, I'm, you know, using broad strokes here because this is a Harvard business review. And so he did sell a big chunk of it, sold it back to NBC for lots and lots

of money about 10 years ago. It was half or about 200 million roughly, correct? Yeah, a lot, really a lot. And I remember him telling me, hmm, I could probably get more money if I held out for the 50th. But he said to me, do I want to be spending this money or do I want my children to be spending this money. In the history of NBC, other than Johnny Carson, who got ownership in 1980 of The Tonight Show, to your knowledge, is there anybody else that was able to get ownership? Not to my knowledge, but I also do know, and I'm not an expert in this area, but it's so much of the way the business, you know, the way the business side of these shows worked has changed.

You know, it used to be that, you know, after five years, you could go into syndication and then you get the $100 million page. I mean, all of this has changed. It's not a simple straight line. So I don't want to kind of overreach and say something I'm not sure about. In terms of regrets, Lauren really doesn't talk much about regrets. But one regret I would think he had, it might have been his biggest producing regret, was when Adam Sandler brought him the script to Billy Madison and he passed on it. And then a gentleman named Robert Simons took over producing Sandler's films. Did you talk to Lauren about that? Do you think that was a regret?

We didn't talk about that one specifically. I think, you know, it's interesting. Back then, you know, you got to remember when Lorne came to SNL, he was deadly serious about comedy. His last hurrah in Toronto before he went to L.A. in the late 60s was

he was a cinephile. He programmed this underground film festival with like Jonas Mekis films and Warhol and weird stuff like that. And he still, he saw film as this kind of high art. You know, his role model, he always said he wanted to go into movies and make his version of the graduate. When he started and when he got his first film deal, he was like trying to do an adaptation of pride and prejudice.

He was doing Don DeLillo's white noise, you know, it wasn't his vision in the beginning that he was going to be making like, you know, Chris Farley comedies and maybe even Wayne's World. And I think he had higher aspirations. So it took a while for him to recognize that these kind of cult comedies using the stars of the show, that was really his wheelhouse. And he was good at it. And even if the critics hated them at first, within five or ten years, they would become cult classics. So in the beginning, it wasn't an automatic yes to say, okay, let's go with my most popular cast members project, whatever it is. He was a little more tony and discerning. He never told me he regretted that about Sandler, but I wouldn't be surprised at it.

Etiquette-wise, if you want to remain loyal to Lauren, you bring him your project. Mike Myers didn't do that with Austin Powers. Did you get the same thing that Lauren was okay with that? Meyer said it really didn't occur to him to go to Lauren? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I sort of, given the way Mike Myers is wired, that, makes sense to me. He was, you know, a big ego, knew he had a big future in Hollywood. I think that, you know, certain people, you know, if you think about someone like Tina or Bill Hader or people

who maybe have a little bit more social finesse than Mike Myers, they would probably just intuit that that's how you play the game. You know, there's a godfather aspect to the whole thing. You suggest, you know, give it to Lauren first. And he might, will pass. And it's interesting that Sandler had the kind of EQ to know that that was the right thing to do. Yeah, he also passed on Tim Robinson. I forget if it's the sketch show or the HBO show.

So once in a while, I mean, nobody has any idea what's going to be a hit, what is, but just the fact that Tim was smart enough to go to Lorne. No, absolutely. Because you think about some of the things that he did say yes to the John Malaney's sitcom, which seemed like such a disaster.

Tracy Morgan's first sitcom. Nobody remembers on NBC. Everything, Tracy. he's wildly succeeded with has either been Lauren or Tina, it seems that I could be off on that, but for the most part. And even some of these very arty, I mean, I'm thinking of one of Simon Rich's early things, was a manseeking woman, which is really cool, you know, but sort of too hip for the room, you know, kind of too hip for the network. But, you know, yeah, Lauren, he throws in with a lot of them.

And I think at this point, he just does the ones that, you know, that he likes and the people that he likes to hang out with. Can you talk about Chevy Chase and Lauren's relationship through the years? Because obviously Lauren was very hurt when Chevy left the show. And then they became friendly again. And then from what I've read, it's been off and off again with their relationship. What is that about to your knowledge? Well, my sense of it is, yeah, I mean, Chevy said to me, it was the worst mistake I ever made, you know, leaving that show after a year. He had this idea like, oh, we've done everything. There isn't anything else to do. And he wanted to be a movie star, you know, and he was offered a lot of money. But Lauren felt personally completely betrayed by that. It hadn't, you know, in year one, it hadn't occurred to him that this could be a 50-year franchise.

And that one of the key parts of it was going to be people leaving, new people coming. You know, he eventually developed a management style kind of like a someone in a professional sports manager. You know, you have rookies, you have stars, and that it's a big churn. But in the 70s, he wasn't thinking about it that way. So I think he still had a huge amount of love for Chevy, and it didn't necessarily have to go south, except that when Chevy came back to host, he did not endear himself to people.

You know, he, in that second year when he came back to host, that's the famous time he got into a fist fight with Bill Murray backstage. He kind of came and lorded his Hollywood celebrity over everybody. And then later in the 90s, he also came back, a guest host. And I think I think he had some kind of an altercation with Will Farrell. People found him to be

very high and mighty. This was 1995. It was the second episode, Will Ferrell was there. And there was a female cast member, a female writer, rather, Cindy Cappanera and Chevy and said some things. And Will was allegedly very

devastated that his hero, who we looked up to, was not the person he necessarily thought that that Was that who it was and he was really upset? Yeah, I mean, I think every time he comes back, he manages to kind of offend some people. And he told me he was really bummed out about his seating at the 40th anniversary. You know, he wanted to sit up where De Niro was and he was instead of the back somewhere.

But I think he also, you know, I spent an afternoon with Chevy and he was very sweet and sentimental in various ways. But he also has this way. and anyone who's, you know, seeing this recent documentary about Chevy or read like Jeff Edgers, great piece in the Washington Post, knows that he has a thing, I mean, I almost feel that it's neurological, where he doesn't seem to have a sense of how his sentences land.

No filter. But maybe when he was 25 and devastatingly cute, it kind of didn't matter. But now, you know, he'll say these things and people will just think, like, what a jerk. And so I think he doesn't, not good at reading the room. He also told me that even as recently probably as 15 or so years ago, he would, you know, he would say to Lauren, well, why don't you have me host? I'd like to

host. But, you know, unless you're Betty White or something, I mean, Lauren really wants the host to be young, young happening stars. He's after a rating, of course, and, you know, he's sentimental, but not that sentimental. You can't just have every host of the show be a kind of an over-the-hill former cast member. Lauren said it was during his daughter's wedding. It was during Chevi's daughter's wedding that Chevy asked Lauren if you get host and Lauren said they're too old.

So yeah, I did read about that. I do want to say Tim Meadows. That's sad. I think there is warmth between them and I had a nice conversation with Chevy and his wife at the 50th. They're lovely people. And he was happy to be there. Yeah. He was happy for Lauren. People were nice to him.

You know, it's not as if he's ostracized. He's just kind of like like the uncle who's a little off, you know. Both Tim Meadows, Will Ferrell and others said that he's always been nice to them. Allegedly, apparently Will Ferrell sent an apology letter to Chevy when he talked about him in the James Andrew Miller, Tom Schaels book. Do you think that there was less or more betrayal that Lauren felt when Dan Aykroyd gave Lauren his word that he was going to come back for 7980 and then didn't? I think that was not a feeling of betrayal as much as just kind of exhausted sadness.

You know, he had lost Chevy. He had lost Belushi. Danny, he had known Danny since he was 19 years old. And I think he felt that their history went back so far. Because Danny had originally said, listen, boss, I'm going to stay. I'm not going to jump ship. I know you need me. We've got to stick together.

And, you know, so when Bernie Burdie Burlstein called Lauren and said, Danny wants to come out and see you at the beach, he has something to tell you. Lauren knew. And I think he, you know, he's a savvy showbiz guy in a lot of ways. I think he recognized that it was sort of inevitable. And of course, you know, Danny would want to make the Blues Brothers and everything with schedule change. But it was more just that he was, he was really sad. It was inevitable. It made him sad. And it increased his feelings of being out of gas that led him to, you know, leave the show after five years. Did you talk to Gene Domanian for the book? She didn't want to talk to me.

She was one of the only people. And did she give you a specific reason? No, just I would rather not talk. In terms of Gene Damanian, I think that one of the things that people don't realize, because I did compare it to Joan Rivers and Johnny Carson a little bit, is Lauren was talking to her at the time about keeping her at Broadway video and actively working together. And she was talking about this with him.

So he was extra blindsided? I think it was more specific than that. And this is a case where I think he did feel betrayed. I mean, I'll really use that word here. He was about to sign, he was talking about, you know, as a backstop in case he didn't go back to the show, signing a deal with, and I hope I don't get this wrong, I think it was with Paramount, with a big studio. And he was talking with her about coming with him on that deal to be a studio employee of his at this studio. Again, I think it's Paramount.

And so, you know, she obviously, at least in his telling, played along in these conversations like, oh, yeah, that would be fun. I'd like to do that. You know, and at the same time, apparently, was negotiating with the NBC executives about replacing Warren. And so I think that for him to hear that out of the blue and that she, you know, that she wouldn't have confided in him. I mean, The Godfather is a really good reference when you're talking about Lauren and his employees. there's definitely a feeling that he's opened up the world to these people. He's given them so much. And he does expect a real kind of loyalty in Omerita from them. And so to be blindsided like that.

Especially in Texas from Barry Diller, of all people. Yeah, imagine you're in gillies with a mechanical bull. Barry Diller walks over to you wearing a fucking cowboy hat basically tells you that your life is over. You know, it sounds terrible. Did you talk to Barbara Gallagher for the book? I couldn't, no, I couldn't get her. I just couldn't find her, actually. Yeah, I don't know where she is either.

Yeah, Lauren, no one knew where she was. In the Doug Hill Jeff Wigan book, they had Barbara Gallagher with Lauren Michaels, and I think it might have been Brandon Tartikoff. And Gene's name came up as a possible replacement for Lauren. And Lauren said, Gene cannot do the job. And according to this book, I really Barbara Galdick. Gallagher was really offended by Lauren's assessment that Gene couldn't do the job. I'm not sure if it was about sexism or what, but to do that job, Lauren was really protecting the show,

correct? Yeah, and I think, you know, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to both of those women, and I think I put this point of view across in the book, I think, especially after Gene's show kind of crashed and burned, there was a widespread feeling that there was sexism going on. here and that people just trashed her because she was a woman or that Lauren didn't support her in that role because she was a woman. And I don't think that's true at all because Lauren has, you know, there's no one he respects more than a really capable woman. I mean, Marcy, Kline. Tina, Marcy, Amy, so many people. Aaron Doyle, Aaron, you know, Aaron David. But I, but he had a very clear explanation for why he didn't think Gene would succeed in the job, which is exactly what came to pass. And it also explained

why she looked attractive to the NBC executives. So Jane was a talent booking executive. Now, that's one of the only people, except for Lauren, in that shop, who's sort of outward-facing, talent-facing. You know, she wore really nice clothes and had her hair done and could take people to nice restaurants and had great executive functioning. She was the placid, classy figurehead who interacted with the executives and the people outside. And so, of course, they would think, oh, here's a high-functioning adult. This is great. But what she had no experience at was being in the room with writers and performers, really,

you know, dealing with, and that's just kind of like a big sandbox of, you know, needy egos, people who can barely tie their own shoes. I mean, you know, Lauren always talks about the writer's room, and he compares it to like a room full of monkeys with typewriters, you know, and that's part of the creativity. but Gene just didn't have any experience dealing with the kind of emotional mess of that and the unrulyness of it. And, you know, if, you know, Pam Norris, say, who had been a writer in the SNL writers or someone like Tina, you know, who had been a writer, those people could have done it. But if you had no experience with those, you know, monkeys throwing shit around in the room, you're not going to get a good result from them. So I really don't think it's sexist at all.

And I think it's important to defend him against that charge. One of Lauren's heroes comedically was Mike Nichols. John Mullaney said a lot of times Lorne in his head would think when he was picking S&L sketches, what would Mike Nichols want? Was that hard when Mike Nichols, when he directed Gilda Live, kind of went through the motions and just essentially took a paycheck and didn't really put his heart into it? Was that hard for Lorne? Did it affect their relationship?

I think that it was one of the most tragic moments in Lauren's young life at that point, because he revered Mike Nichols. He couldn't believe he got to be friends with Mike Nichols. In the book, I say that they were similar, like, traitors in the friendship economy. You know, they both interacted with the world of the New York Intelligentsia in the same way. And so it was almost just like a weird accident that John Callie, who was going to produce the Gilda Live movie, which Lauren, I think, had talked about directing himself his first time in the director's chair,

Callie just said in some offhand way, oh, I'm going to have Mike Nichols do it. And so for Lawrence, like, oh, my God, this is his hero. But also, this is the thing he wanted to direct. And in the back of his head, he knew probably, you know, that this Nichols had never directed, a live event. It just, it wasn't optimal in so many ways. And yet he couldn't go back and say, no, I don't want Mike Nichols to direct it because Mike Nichols was his hero. So it was a super awkward and painful moment for him. I think particularly because then the movie was a complete flop.

So for the first film with Lauren's name on it, to be a complete as a producer, to be a total flop, it must have heard. And then the album with Gilda, when they're all listening for the first time, and they realize we can't release this. Yeah, yeah.

But, you know, again, the one thing about Lauren is as much as, you know, all of his very, he's a lot of close personal friends, people in the industry and everything, but there is a part of his brain, he's good at compartmentalizing. And I'm sure that with a nickel's thing, it was just like,

well, this is just business. It didn't affect their relationship. And they remained close all of Nichols' life. Can you talk about Lauren Michael? Some of his notes just when I hear them, I'm just like, what is he talking about? Like he talks about Perry Como, how he could walk onto the stage. And Lauren actually used an analogy to teach. Tell me if I have this right.

He taught Seth Myers when he got the gig on at 1230 how to walk on stage. Is that correct? That's what I hear. I don't think I put that in the book. but I remember someone telling me that, and I might have even asked Lauren about it, about his obsession with how Seth walked to the desk. And I think that was born of those early days. He was on the Pericomo Christmas special when he was less than 30.

It was a terrible show. But John Wells, the producer, told him that explained why Coma was a television star. And one of the things was that he knew how to. walk across the stage perfectly smoothly in time with the music, sit on the stool, keep singing, and he knew how to just make his eye twinkle in just the right way. And for young Lorne, I mean, that was a lesson in how on television, where everything's very close up, the smallest things make a huge difference. And the walking, obviously that lodged in his head in some way.

And so I think it is interesting. Like that is the kind of thing when people make an entrance. You know, he's always very conscious of how the entrance. and the exits happen. And one of his, you know, you don't cut to a closed door. I mean, he's always thinking about the mechanics. And, yeah, I think that does have to do with Barry Como. Were you able to talk to Chris Smith from New York Magazine?

The last time we talked, we mentioned, Lauren still talks about that, about how he feels somewhat betrayed people. I think Chris and I emailed. I think we emailed about it. Yeah, we did. Yeah, no, no. I mean, when that story comes up, you can see Lauren wins. You know, it hurts.

It was tough. I remember talking to people at the show. They said that there were things that weren't true. But I just from, I talked to Chris Smith one time I met him, but I didn't know if there was any more insight. He basically defended himself saying, this is what I witnessed. I wrote what I saw. That was his take. Yeah, I mean, I think people felt that it was unfair, that it was cherry picking.

I mean, things that, you know, you could say about a lot of journalists. This is what Janet Malcolm's whole Uber is about, you know. I don't know that anyone has ever pointed out things like specifically. specific things that they felt were incorrect. Like, I know Dave Mandel feels that, you know, that Smith kind of cherry pick, just made the writers look like just a big bunch of ridiculous babies, you know, kind of made fun of Dave Mandel for living at home. And they just thought it was kind of unfair. But, you know, it's tough business. You know, I'm a magazine editor. I get it. To my knowledge, the one thing I believe this was from Christmas said that Ellen Clayghorn on the premiere,

that the only role she had was as a prostitute, but that was not true. She was in Bye-bye, which was a Fred Wolf sketch as a flight attendant or something. Yeah, well, that doesn't sound right. That sounds like an exaggeration. I mean, one of the things that you learn, if you're reporting, talking to comedians, and you must, you have obviously encountered this with this being, you know, your work, is that. And comedians, I mean, every human being, whether they're a comedian or not, has a tendency to want to make the story better. You know, you want the story to be memorable. You want the story to be funny.

If you're a comedian, you have that in spades. So one of the things that was interesting for me reporting all of this stuff is you'd hear similar stories from different people with a lot of variation, you know, because everyone is telling the story to their best advantage, to make it funnier. They're exaggerating this way and that way. And so what I had to do is I had to sift and weigh and try to figure out, okay, who's thing can I corroborate? Who's more reliable? Because people exaggerate. They wanted to be funny. At one point in the book, you actually have to show Lauren a newspaper article for him to admit that something existed.

It was one of his friends in Canada, I believe, that got it's legal. It was his uncle Pep. Yes. It was an very important mentor and father figure to him who kind of took care of his family after Lauren's father died when he was 14, and Uncle Pep stepped in and kind of kept them on course. They had financial difficulties. Lawrence's mother was very depressed.

Uncle Pep really saved his life, and, you know, figuratively, and was a great role model. And so then when Uncle Pep, his name was, you know, Morris Levy, and someone described the Levy family to me sort of like the Kennedys in Canada. They were like big mockers, a big, you know, in the scrap metal armaments business. And when Papp was older,

he was arrested in Dulles Airport. His firm had been selling tanks to Iran when it was against the law. It was like right in the middle of all this Oliver North stuff. And it was a felony. I mean, it was a big, big deal. And yeah, and I asked, about it at one point because I knew Pep was so important. I knew he was,

family's important to Lauren, and Lauren's very loyal. And I said, you know, I'd love to get your take on what happened to your Uncle Pep when he got arrested. And at first, Lauren, and this is the only time in our interviews in my reporting that this kind of thing happened. And he looked at me, and he said, I don't know what you're talking about. You know, I mean, Lauren was probably 79 or 8 at the time. It is possible he could have had a senior moment and was forgetting it. But it also was possible that he was trying to kind of manifest the reality he wanted and trying to send me a signal that he didn't want that in the book.

And, you know, that is not the kind of thing that I would have responded to that way. So instead of just saying, okay, Lauren, I said, well, here, here are the clips from the Washington Post. Do you remember now? And he looked at them. And, you know, and he didn't fuss about it or he didn't deny it. He said, oh, right. You know, again, maybe he was just hoping it was going to go. way. He said, oh, right. And he had an explanation. He thought, he said, Uncle Pep was by that time

very, very elderly, and he had been misled into this situation by some younger relative who had more control at the firm. So, you know, I mean, it's all in the book. But I did think it was interesting because, you know, what a producer does is, is he manifests the reality that he wants to see, you know, pushing all different kinds of levers at his disposal. And I think, he probably, I mean, again, who can blame him, but I think he probably was hoping that that would signal to me that he didn't want it in the book, and I would respect that wish. But, you know, that's not the kind of journalist that I am. Is there anybody that you know of? I'm going to use Chris Catan as an example. Someone that, you know, he mentioned, according to Katan, he alleged that Lauren

pressured him to have relations with Amy Heckerling to get Roxbury movie made. Lawrence denied it very, very strongly. Do you have any idea the relationship of Catan was able to get back to Lorner, is that relationship? I think that relationship is probably toast. Okay, that's what I thought. You know, I think I think this wasn't in the book. This might have happened after I, this might have come out after I was kind of done with

the book, but as a speculation, you know, I'll tell you what I kind of, you can sort of imagine a kind of a jocular locker room kind of thing where, I mean, again, This is in my head, you know, but I can kind of, having spent a lot of time around room, you know, foul-mouthed comedy writers, you can just imagine a situation where a bunch of them are sitting in a room and someone say, yeah, I better keep her happy or, you know, just some kind of goofy, locker roomy. It's really hard to imagine Lorne or anyone saying in some strategic way, you must go and have sex with that woman. I mean, that's just, that's ridiculous. He alleged that he got his neck, neck broken and NBC has no record Saturday Night Live, apparently has no record that any of that

happened as well. So Lauren is very good with journalists with giving non-answers. One, I remember asked him about why Jay Farrow and Terran Killam were asked to return. And he gave a very, like a sentence or two, non-answer. If Lauren tried to do that with you, did you have any techniques to get an answer out of him? Well, I mean, I think the most important thing, I mean, you know, I was in an interesting position because, for one, having Lauren talked to me so much was great because he hasn't talked to the press that much over the years, certainly not extensively. And the handful of times he did, like a lot of famous people, you know, he's smart enough to kind of have talking points that he wants to get out there. And stories are taken out of his pocket like well-worn pebbles that he's told again and again and again. And the trick, when you're in, and I tell this to young journalists all the time, the trick is always just to get people off of their old canards, the stories they've told 100 times, get them off those, out of those grooves.

So I think that what I would maybe do in a situation like that would be just to sort of reangle the question or say, oh, well, you know, well Buck Henry told me such and such, or, you know, just, you just have to kind of change your line of question. So the question is really landing. A person's really thinking about it and thinking about the answer rather than, you know, it's like you punching buttons on a jukebox and the same story comes out. I don't know if that answered your question. I definitely did not ever feel that Lauren was trying to snow me, you know. I didn't feel that he was trying to manage me and handle me or push me off topics. I'll also say, you know, especially.

because the Jan Wetter, Joe Hagan biography, came out while I was working on this book. And, you know, Jan Wetter, who was a former very close friend of Lawrence, it's a problematic person, you know, really driven by appetites of all kinds, kind of predatory, kind of a terrible boss. And I just found, you know, I was very, I'm a very thorough reporter. And I was, it was a relief to me that I didn't come across any creepy skeletons in Lauren's which I would have then felt compelled to put in the book. You know, Lauren is very straight and narrow guy married to the show, lives for the show.

So I was relieved. Yeah, that had a bit good. I know that when your original manuscript was twice as long, what are some details that you did cut out that you maybe looking back would have been like this would have been nice to get in? But obviously you had to cut it in half. What are some of those stories off the top of your head? Gee, that is such a good question, but I, you know, I, and I have been asked that before, but I think that really, like, it's not, I, I, I wish I, you know, maybe what I'll do is I'll email you later if I can think of one, but really, really in the, in the compression, it was more, you know, sort of like you have three anecdotes where, you know, maybe you only need one to make a point, so you cut some anecdotes. and I think that really the book just became kind of tighter. You know, it's more like a bullion cube.

It's very compressed. But here's one that I can't remember. Maybe I did cut it. Maybe I cut it, so I'll tell. But I might be in there, but I'm going to tell it in case I cut it because I remember thinking about cutting it. And it was an example. It was a story that the great Bruce McCulloch from the kids in the hall told me about

reacting to one of Lauren's notes. and he was a writer on the show in the late 80s, and he'd written a sketch for Joan Cusack as a teacher. Does this ring a bell? I can't remember if this is. Maybe it's still in the book, but so, well, I'll tell it anyway for your listeners. And so at SNL, a lot of people don't know. The writers basically dictate a lot of the production.

They choose the costumes. They work with the set designers on the set. They're really involved in everything about their sketch. And at dress rehearsal or rehearsal, Lauren looked at Joan Cusack's character and said, why is she looking so dowdy? Why does she look like that? Can't you have her looking a little more attractive? Because, you know, one of his comedy rules is do it in sunshine.

It should always be attractive and pleasant. And you don't really want anyone looking like a piece of shit, you know. He looked like, you know, he said, she's a beautiful woman, you know, make her. And Bruce was in. sensed and he just turned to Lauren and he said like you want me to put her in a fucking bikini you know and he was really

angry and he said I can't believe Lauren didn't fire me for that you know but I you know there are probably three other examples of people exploding at Lauren in that way and I I think I might have caught the Bruce one I don't know if it's in there but

stuff like that has there ever been a cast member is to close and a Saturday Night Live former cast member that is close to Lauren other than Jimmy Fallon. Is there anybody that has a closer relationship? They vacation together every year. Lauren is down on the sixth floor with him all the time, whereas Conan, when he was at 1230, Lauren was almost never down there. Well, I think there's a, it's very intense with Jimmy, but it's, you know, he's very close

with Tina. He's very close with, you know, Colin and Scarlett-Humhansson. He was very close with Pete Davidson when he was on the show. I think they did some vacationing together. Yeah, I mean, some of them, they're really like family. When you were at the new show, was there any inkling that this was not going to work? Was everyone optimistic? What do you recall being on 59th straight at the broadcast center? You know, it's interesting.

I wish I kept a journal at that time in my life because I was kind of green. I didn't know that much about television. I watched, of course, watched SNL from the beginning. but I would hear people talking and definitely a lot of the writing and production staff were anxious about the show

from the very beginning because I think they felt that it had been kind of underconceived you know everybody was like well how's it different from SNL except for the fact that it's going to be taped and edited and there was some anxiety about that because if you recall

Ebersaw's SNL was still happening then that's right and there was a feeling that it was a little dashed off. You know, and then obviously even the title, the new show, was kind of, I think Downey or somebody said to me, even that just bespeaks a lack of originality. You know, like, okay, we'll just do this again. Because, you know, it was ironic.

It wasn't new at all. It was just like SNL at 10 o'clock. When you were at the show, you were there for a week, November of 2018, when Jonah Hill hosted. You mentioned Leslie Jones was really unhappy that week. Almost every week there's going to be a cast member, there's going to be writers that are just not happy they didn't get their sketching. Was this

other people that you were talking about Leslie Jones being unhappy that week, or did you witness this yourself? Most of it is just stuff I was in the room for, you know? I was in the room for a lot of it. So, yeah, and people talked about it, but it was definitely a theme,

especially in the early part of the week. I think that, and Lauren talked about it too. I think there had been discussions of maybe them hiring a special writer for her. Her gripe was that the writers, she didn't think the writers could write for her. You know, she was black. She was older than most of them. She didn't feel that they could kind of get a beat on her experience. So there was discussion of bringing in a special writer.

You know, there was just a lot of discussion, like how can we make her happier? she was cranky and upset. And what was nice and nice about that week is by the end of the week, she was in a pretty good mood. She actually had a good show. I think I say on the Saturday night, my last view of her that night

was her rapturously taking a selfie with Candace Bergen, you know. Yeah, and she got that Weezer sketch in with Matt Damon, and it was a great sketch. Yeah. But that's always people at the show that have even been there a while have a tough time getting writers,

especially, Leslie Jones does not have the versatility as some of the other character people do. So, I mean, it's definitely a little bit more limited in what she can play. But she's very, very funny with what she possesses. Yeah, and I think she's a really good example of how with certain people who maybe aren't, you know, don't, aren't as conventionally versatile as like Kristen Whig or Mikey Day or we'll hate her. so often they will the way they'll make their mark, make their

first connection with the audience is by doing a weekend update character because they can come, sit down, and the audience can see them as themselves. You know, think about Sandler and the little red sweatshirt song and, you know, the way people, and even Chevy Chase saying, I'm Chavez and you're not. I mean, they have an immediate connection with the audience.

The audience says, oh, I'm invested in this person now. And Leslie's persona, like Pete David, too. It's just so big and so original that that was sort of what created her fan base. But yeah, I mean, there weren't that many, quite as many things that she could do in a sketch context. Yeah, she did update the first time there was a pushback. It was controversial at the time which people don't really remember too much, but update did really get her over eventually with the audience. You talk about how Lauren is always with Kasten is looking for the next dangerous person, and kind of like a balushy danger.

And you mentioned Horatio Sands. I never really considered him dangerous. Did the show consider him dangerous? Well, I think that what I was talking about there, he always wanted somebody big. He wanted there to be like a funny fat man, you know. I mean, Sands isn't dangerous in a way that Chris Farley, another funny fat man was.

I mean, Farley really modeled himself on Belushi. It's right. Dyer results, as we can see. I mean, he even would tape his eyebrows up at night so that they would look like belushi's. But, yeah, I think he had this idea that, you know, having a funny fat guy who's kind of menacing would be good. It's, you know, like the way he said to me, you know, I know that I know that he compares himself to Shakespeare a lot, you know, Lauren, in a kind of endearingly grandiose way. And one of the things he said, I know Shakespeare had a balushi. That's why Falstaff appears in three plays, you know.

I remember that in your book. That's great. When you went down to Austin at the Harry Ransom Center, they have the Lorne Michaels exhibit. Did you learn anything? Did you go through the archives of stuff maybe that you had never seen before? Well, I had access to the archives before they were sold to give, I was rather donated to ransom. So I had seen a lot of it. I mean, I didn't, you know, there was more, there were things there I hadn't seen because, you know, life is only so long.

But I had seen a lot of, I had a lot of great stuff like Warren's letters. from camp, you know, all the weird clips of things that his mother kept in the 1960s and 70s, a lot of NBC memos from the early days, you know, a lot of that stuff. The funny thank you note, it's one of my favorite one, thank you note from Mick Jagger thanking Lauren for the Christmas gift of the thermometer. And it just makes you think like, what the fuck? What is it? But so, no, I mean, that's a very,

extensive. I mean, that, that, it's very interesting, but I don't think I learned anything, but I love just seeing it all, just the texture of all that old ephemera is really fun. And this is my favorite thing about it. You go down there, it's huge. It's the biggest show, I think they ever had, except one they did with the Daryl Zanick estate. And it's, it's vast. And one of the last things in it is Alec Baldwin's Trump wig. And then you kind of exit to the lobby. And so the Trump wig, it's literally like 15 feet away. from the Ransom Center's Gutenberg Bible. Oh, wow.

And it's just as perspective. You know what I mean? You've got the Gutenberg Bible here. You've got Alex Hare there. It's just great. To your knowledge, after Don Allmeyer left NBC, did him and Lauren have any relationship after? Lauren, looking back, does he recognize that Olmeyer,

there were some good things about him taking control? Yeah, listen, Lauren takes a long view. I mean, Eversal was the guy who got him in the door at NBC. Once the show was up and running, he was an irritant in some ways. You know, overreaching, made it hard. And then I think there was some bad blood. But then, you know, when after Ebersol came back and took over the show in the 80s and prevented it from dying, there was definitely more than a detente.

I mean, they had long dinners. They talked about the show. I think they both let bygones be bygones. And then, of course, when the terrible tragedy happened in Ebersaw's life and his son was killed in a small plane crash, I think that anyone who had ever had, you know, ill-willed toward Eversal that was washed away out of compassion and caring. To your knowledge, was there anybody upset with anything that got into your book that they thought maybe it wasn't accurate or they just?

weren't thrilled with it, to your knowledge. You know, it's a great source of pride to me that I have not yet gotten one of those letters or phone calls. You know, if someone has an inaccuracy, I'd really love to know. And the people who really know Lorne, you know, his childhood friends or his, you know, some of his relatives and the people who have been around him for a long time, the two things I like to hear most, just like, wow, you've really nailed him. You've really kind of got it.

And then people saying, oh, my God, I learned so much. I didn't know. In particular, the thing that was fun for me was being able to draw lines between so many of his early experiences pre-S&L and sort of the way those things manifested in his producer skills. I mean, even trying to describe what the skill set of a producer is is, you know, kind of a vaporous. It's difficult. But, yeah, I mean, I definitely. I didn't, I didn't have to make any corrections for the paperback.

But, you know, again, I'm open to hearing about them if anyone has them. There was a bit in work for your book. You'd never done a book before. Did you do a full book proposal? Or was it just like a one sheet what you wanted to do? I did a proposal. And I was encouraged by my old friend, book agent, David Cune, who I went to college with. And he said, And, you know, you have, and I realized after watching the 40th show that I had a real point of view on, Lorne. You know, I watched that show. I thought it was really funny, but I also was moved by it, thinking that this one guy had been, said such a big impact on what has made generations of Americans laugh. And also, I realized, you know, because I've been a magazine editor for 40 years, I've been, I had a humor among other things. And I think that without SNL, you know, are the default world.

view of the culture, you know, the willingness to take the world, not take the world too seriously, mixing up the ridiculous and the awful, you know, everything that we've come to take for granted after Letterman and Colbert and, you know, this is all goes back to Lorne. So, and because I had worked there in the 80s and then kept up with all these writers and people I met there, you know, many of whom still write for me, like Jack Handy and Steve Martin. You know, I've been hearing people talk about Lauren in their funny, exasperated way for decades, you know, the way they compared him to, you know, Darth Vader or Kim Jong-un or the Wizard of Oz. So I had a real, when I sat, so at my agents with guidance from him, I just wrote this proposal. It was a bunch of pages of just

all the different things I knew about Lauren, my theories as to how he became the way he was, and then a long list of all the people that I knew would talk to me. I did not approach Lauren before sending that proposal out. I knew if I had said, Lauren, I'd like to write a book about you. He would have said absolutely not. So what I did is I sold a proposal without him. I said I told the publisher, I thought he would probably talk to me, but I didn't know. And if he didn't, I would still be able to write a good book, you know, given the kind of access that I had to his world.

So, and I, you know, I mean, I have told this story a few times, but so. What happened is I sold the book, and I went to see him in his office, and I said, Lauren, I wanted to tell you, I've just signed a contract to write a book about you. And, you know, I knew he didn't want a biography inflicted on him. And I said, I don't need anything from you, but if you would like to talk to me, it would be a richer book, you know, better reflect your legacy. And he just looked like he was going to have a coronary. Anyone who's read the book knows that for Lauren, the thing you most do not want in life is not to be.

totally in control. And he didn't have control of that moment. He was shocked and surprised. He hates surprises. But it was, you know, we had a pleasant little visit. And he, his response was, and I would come to know, this is a common management response for him, was just to sort of deflect, just kick it down the road. And so we eventually agreed that we would meet for a drink a few days later talk about it some more. And so I prepared all my best kind of diplomatic negotiating pitches, you know, in my head. And we met for a drink. And, you know, he ordered his Belvedere and Cranberry. And I was about to start in. And, but he just started telling his stories. He was just, you know, Milton Burrell, you know, Phyllis Diller, Madonna. It just was going on with

these stories. And I was like, oh my God, you know, he's in. And I, because I didn't expect this, I didn't have a tape recorder. I didn't even have a notepad, you know. So I kept excusing myself and going into the ladies' room to like scribble down the good things he was saying on a con Ed bill because I didn't want to lose any of it, you know. And so Seth Myers later told me that there's a very common thing that people in Lauren's world describe where you're in a, you're having a conversation with Lauren, and you're kind of like, wait a minute, did I miss the previous conversation? You know, often that's the conversation where you're told that you're hired. Like a lot of, that one doesn't happen. And so suddenly you're just the end. So that's kind of what happened to me.

And I think that what, and he didn't ask anything of me, he had no, put no restrictions on. He didn't ever want to read anything. He had no approval or control over the book at all. I think he respected, you know, he loved the New Yorker, and I think he knew this was going to be a real book, you know, like the, you know, Mark Harris book on Mike Nichols, say, or a Walter Isaacson book. And he knew that that would be, you know, better that than some kind of shmagee you from Entertainment Weekly doing a quickie bio. And so I have to say it was a great honor that he, you know, I interviewed him at least 50 times and spent a lot of time with him. And he, you know, he trusted me. He trusted the process.

You talk to so many cast members, so many former writers of the show. Lauren's management, one of his techniques is he says fatigue is your friend. He keeps people up really, really late to write and he thinks you're going to get a more creative, just better product. From talking to those writers and cast members, do they feel the same? Do you think from talking to all these people that that is actually accurate, that you'll get a better show? I mean, I know why he says it, and I think that there is definitely. something about the kind of punchy camaraderie. You know, if you look at the Jim Downey documentary that I was the executive producer,

an executive producer with Andy Breckman on that, there's some really fascinating footage from the writer's room in the 90s that shows Sandler and Smygel Bob Odenkirk. They're like throwing this slime ball around. It's just, it's chaos. Right. And, you know, if an executive had seen it, they probably would have said, fire all those people.

That's not productive. But I think there is something. you know, Lauren, we think of it as kind of a frat house atmosphere, but I think he thinks of it as this disinhibited, you know, like Peter Pan's The Lost Boys, these guys just kind of the juices get flowing.

And there's something to that. That said, definitely a number of writers have said to me, you know, it is kind of weird that we still do it the way they did it in the 70s when they were taking cocaine all the time. You know, we could use the,

they'll say, I mean, Smygel has gone on. record saying this. You could use the down hiatus weeks to write more sketches or perfect things or you could come in, people with young children at home say, why don't we come to work at 9 a.m. and go home at 6. There are people who recognize that you'd like to say that maybe it could be more high functioning. But Lauren, you know, he's also superstitious. He likes to do it the way they've always done it. He doesn't want to mess with it. Downey has a thing he likes to say where if you had a room full of Swiss engineers and you said to them, okay, here's the problem. We have to do this and this and this and this

to get the show on the air. They would do some calculation. They'd say, okay, you need about 11 days to accomplish all that. But, you know, they have six days. That's what they have. And so they do it in six days. And Lauren's rationale would probably be, you know, you have to have all these hardships, knife edge adrenaline anxiety you know it becomes like the hunger games you know by Wednesday and that's all part of what gives the show its special frisson you know it's like doing it without a net did you interview marcy Klein oh yeah yeah what did you get from her because she was such an influence just that she had Lauren's ear for such a long time and then she left the show and there really wasn't a big deal in the media which shocked me because she was such an important

fixture in SNL What do you think her contribution was and what did you get from talking to her? Well, Lauren, I think I first talk about Marcy in the book where I talk about his predisposition to hire the relatives of famous people. You know, I think he loved, or as Mark McKinney said, you know, you have Calvin Klein's daughter. She's not going to be swayed or phased by any famous person, you know, and she also comes with a great Rolodex, right? But no, I think that Lauren respects people who are comfortable in a room. with big personalities and famous people, people who don't get easily cowed or flustered.

And I think that Marcy had all these good people skills, similar to what I was saying earlier about Jean Domanian. She was very presentable. She could work a room. She could take her dinner party. She could get things done. And I think Lauren did rely on her. And I think as often happens, even today,

over the years with some of the assistance, their writers and cast who feel like, why does that person have his ear so much, you know, sees them, see those people as a threat even. But, well,

the thing about Marcy is when she left the show, she did have a lot of, you know, she worked as a producer. I mean, she was a producer on 30 Rock, you know, huge success.

She helped Lauren produce a pilot with Matthew Broderick that was written by Paul Sims. That it was about, I think it was some kind of small town sort of Mayberry thing where Roderick plays the owner of a small newspaper in the Hamptons. That failed. But, you know, so she was doing that stuff.

She was developing. And I think she was seen as kind of the Alec Whisperer, which is why she played an important role on 30 Rock. It's unbelievable. She got an EP credit because Lauren always takes the EP credit and everyone else gets producer. And the fact that she said she really had to work to get that on 30 Rock. Well, good for her. I'm glad she did. Did you speak to Daryl Hammond for the book?

I didn't, no. And again, I think it was just a sort of a, I kind of ran out of time. I mean, there were only a few people that I didn't talk to. And in most cases, it was just because I could have, you know, I could still be reporting it today. Oh, I know. You went three or four years where you were talking non-stop. Also, Hammond was somebody who was very well represented in the, you know, he was covered a lot. So I took some things from other articles about him.

he talked about his situation a lot and wrote a book that's uh really true in terms of promoting within did he learn that from his mentors or Lauren I mean if you look at people like Mike shoemaker I think Shoemaker was an intern or a PA yeah he's running Seth I mean there were so many of these people that just started very low in the totem pole um where did he get that management style yeah that's that's a really good question I mean I think that fat I think of it as a sort of a family thing. I mean, family's always been really important to him. He's unfazed by the concept of nepo babies. He kind of invented nepo babies. I mean, look at, you know, Steve Hagan's son and Hurley his son. And I think it must have something to do with the hot house world of Forest Hill outside

Toronto where he grew up, you know, the way Uncle Pep stepped in. He had this big scrap metal factory. Lauren and his brother all worked at the factory. You know, everybody, it was, everybody was, I don't know. It was that kind of little world where everyone kind of, you help these people and your family, you help your neighbors. I also think he has an intuitive sense of, you know, you give these young people a break, you figure out who the good ones are, and then they're going to look after you in your old age. They're going to stay loyal. They owe a lot to you, you know, and he recognizes the value of that. It's part of what I talk about when I talk about the friendship economy. They owe so much to him. When we're recording this, it was just recently they had the first episode of Saturday Night Live, London.

Can you see Lauren doing this in different countries? And what did you think of the first episode if you did see it? I did not see it yet. I just read a couple of reviews today. I guess deadline was kind of didn't like it at all. But the UK paper seemed to have been pretty kind to it. But, well, one of the things, actually, this maybe was cut from my book. You asked what was cut from my book.

I was fascinated to learn from Jack Sullivan and the president of Broadway video that for years, they have been selling franchises to SNL to lots of other countries. Korea, I know that Korea. There's Korea. There was China, Italy, France, or a whole bunch of them. And basically, they would just sell the name and the basic sort of concept. Sometimes those showrunners would come to New York and sit in for a week to sort of see basically how it's done. But it was just like a licensing thing. They weren't involved in the content the way Lauren is involved in this content with the UK one.

But actually this is in the book, one of my favorite anecdotes is when they did it out of Milan, these Italian producers were doing it. And again, Broadway video didn't have any, they didn't negotiate for editorial control, but they sent a tape of it to the Broadway video people to look. at. And they looked at it, and it opens with some topless Italian woman running around the stage. They said, well, you know, the nudity, I mean, it's not really our brand. I'm not so sure about that. And then the Italian people just said, like, what? You do not find her beautiful? You know, so it was just. And in China, yeah, and in China, like they weren't allowed to do anything with politics. So you can see how these things would be kind of denatured, SNL. The British thing is different.

Lauren is an anglophile. He loves London. He loves spending time there. There's a ton of friends there. And I think it was probably just kind of a long-held dream to be able to have a project there. I haven't been in touch with him since it happened. I assume he was there in person. I hope he was.

But it is a strange mixture of, you know, I'm sure he made a lot of the key hires of like delegating. and it is a strange mixture of being in control but not in control. And I'm wondering how that's going down for him. What did you think? Did you see it? I saw the cold open. I saw some sketches. I thought they did a great job.

And as I told Bill Carter and John Schneider, because we do a roundtable for late-nighter.com, I said that I felt really bad because they are not going to be given any time to figure out the show. They're going to be judged right away, which I think that this show is such a hard thing to figure out. and they need to have a little bit of time. But I thought that they did great. And I think some of the people that were giving them bad reviews wanted it to be bad. It's just, I think that they're going to figure out. If they're given a chance, and thank goodness they were given two more episodes that they'll have instead of six, eight.

I hope it succeeds wildly. From what I looked at, I think that the talent is really, really great. Yeah, no, it's interesting. I hadn't thought of it about it until this moment, but it's almost a little bit like the new show where, you know, Lauren had been out of it for a few years and like this is his comeback and people were kind of like, well, can he still be good? You know, is it going to, you know, and there were all these expectations heaped on it. Whereas the original SNL, you know, Lauren described the Friday, Saturday, 1130 time slot as like a vacant lot on the edge of town. Nobody was paying attention. You know, it was kind of

like putting on a show in the basement. No one was going to look at it. They could kind of, and it did start with a very small viewership so you could just experiment. But no, you're right. This one is really under the spotlight. Yeah, I hope they do. They succeed. I think it will. Susan Morrison, thanks for talking to us again. This was fun. No, it's always fun. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Thanks for listening. Please subscribe so you never miss an episode. On Apple Podcasts, please rate it and leave a review. Be sure to go to late-nighter.com for all your late-night TV news. And you can find my podcast at late-nighter.com forward slash podcasts. Have a wonderful week, and I'll see you next Tuesday.