Women on the Move
Susan Morrison on
Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live
Tracy Morgan dubbed him Obi-Wan Kenobi, Kate McKinnon called him the “great and powerful Oz” and one of his writers described him as “some kind of very distant, strange comedy god.”
No matter how Lorne Michaels is characterized, he has indisputably reshaped American comedy for over half a century from his helm as creator and producer of Saturday Night Live. From his seat in the bleachers of Studio 8H at 30 Rock (which Tom Hanks calls his “sacred temple”), Michaels has overseen the show’s transition from analog videotape to streaming; shaped the careers of comedic icons like Tina Fey, Will Ferrell and Chris Rock; and managed to channel the sensibilities of Boomers, Millennals, GenZ and GenAlpha into laughter.
Yet, Michaels the man was long a public mystery . . . until Susan Morrison’s Lorne hit the bookstores late last year and became a New York Times bestseller. After hundreds of interviews with Michaels himself, his friends and a cast of SNL’s dazzling stars, Morrison pierced the bubble of the tastemaker, mogul, genius talent spotter, shrewd businessman, raconteur and winner of more than a hundred Emmys.
She joins us to talk about this mythic figure, a diffident man obsessed with the show that has defined his life, the profound impact he has had on American culture and what it was like to spend so much time with America’s leading comedians.
Former editor-in-chief of The New York Observer and original editor of Spy, Susan Morrison is the articles editor at The New Yorker.