Apparently NBC Considered Firing Lorne Michaels From 'SNL' And Replacing Him With A Future A-List Director

Cinema Blend

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 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.

Transcript

00:00most of the things that I didn't know were things that didn't have to do with the show,

00:04like the things before the show. Okay, I'll give you two examples. One thing that really

00:09surprised me, and it's a part of the book that I loved writing, is that after pitching this show

00:15in Hollywood for years, he finally was offered, NBC said, come to New York and you could do this

00:20show. And he almost said no. He came really close to saying no because he didn't want to leave Los

00:26Angeles. He was really comfortable in California by then. He loved the beach and he loved the desert

00:32and he thought that New York was pretentious. It was also in 1975 really unsafe. It was a mess.

00:40It was declaring bankruptcy, murders and burglaries were up. That was the era of taxi driver and escape

00:49from New York. So he was thinking like, gee, I kind of like California. And another thing about

00:56that whole discussion that I think is interesting is he started, and I think coming from Canada,

01:01right where it's cold and boring, he liked the fact that, you know, he always, he always says that

01:06California invented the idea of fun as a value not to be ashamed of. You know, that in California,

01:14you could read Chekhov and go see an Elvis movie. And that didn't mean that you weren't a serious

01:19person. And he said, you know, people in New York basically just wanted to go into the basement and

01:24read the Tibetan book of the dead. So he thought it was a sort of pretentious superior culture and he

01:33didn't really want anything to do with it. So he almost said no. And if he had said no, the show

01:38wouldn't have happened. And then I guess another thing that I didn't know at all. I mean, I did know that

01:45in the 90s, he tussled with the network and with Don Ohlmeyer. And they made him fire Farley and Sandler.

01:55But I didn't know that the network had gone so far as to interview people to maybe replace him. You know,

02:02I didn't know that they had reached out to Judd Apatow, who was just in his 20s,

02:07and had these kind of, you know, very vague conversations with him about, you know, maybe

02:15coming in and a producer role and who knows what would happen next. And because they were really

02:21thinking of firing Lorne. And, you know, Judd loved the show. It was always his dream to work at the

02:28show. And Sandler was his roommate. So, you know, I knew the show well. And so he was intrigued, but

02:36he was so put off by the sneaky back channel behavior of these guys, that I think he felt

02:43that karmically, it would just be so wrong and so disrespectful of Lorne and what Lorne had created

02:49that he told them, forget it. But I don't think anyone, I mean, I don't think it's widely known

02:55that he was really on the ropes there.

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