‘Lorne’ Pulls Back Curtain on ‘SNL’ Creator, Including His Surprising Feelings on Sinéad O’Connor’s 1992 Performance – Rolling Stone
By
Jonathan Zavaleta
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Despite his enormous impact on American culture, Lorne Michaels famously keeps a low profile, but Susan Morrison’s new book, Lorne, looks to peel back at least some of the mystique behind the creator of Saturday Night Live. The book, published Feb. 18, comes hot on the heels of SNL 50, which served as something of a class reunion for decades of cast members, hosts, and icons of the show.
Morrison is a writer and editor at The New Yorker. For Lorne, she conducted hundreds of interviews with former cast members and writers of the show, including interviewing the notoriously press-averse Michaels himself. The book is available today as a hardcover from major retailers like Amazon and indie bookstores.
$33.48
The book’s parts are labeled by days of the week, tracing Michael’s workweek as the head of SNL while also going back to his origins and rise through Canadian and American broadcasting. The book chronicles Michael’s takes on some of the show’s landmark moments, including the controversies — one of the show’s most notorious performances involved Sinéad O’Connor, who tore a picture of Pope John Paul II during her live performance.
“NBC got hundreds of calls from angry Catholic viewers, but what bothered Michaels about the incident was not that it was inflammatory, but that it was unscripted. In a live show, surprises throw off the camera people and the timing, the near-military precision required to make the show go. ‘She called that priest stuff early,’ Steve Higgins [Tonight Show announcer and long-time SNL writer] said. ‘Which is why I did not chastise her,’ Michaels said. ‘I thought that whatever she was doing was completely sincere.’”
The book also chronicles the powerful, and sometimes complicated influence Michaels has over SNL alum. In one section, Conan O’Brien tells Morrison, “Whenever I’m sitting around a table with anyone in the comedy world, there’s a gravitational pull to talk about Lorne.”
SNL is currently on its 50th season, with the next episode airing on March 1 with host Shane Gillis and musical guest Tate McRae. The March 8 episode will feature Lady Gaga on double duty. The NBC series is available to stream on Peacock when it airs with the Peacock Premium Plus plan, or the next day with the Premium plan.
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