Maybe it's the aging of celebrity, maybe it's the aging of TV audiences, maybe it's just the world now.
To bring it back to Lorne, it worked for the show. He knows people love seeing Maya Rudolph come back and do Kamala, and that's good for attention and good for ratings. At the end of the day, I think he's incredibly proud of all of the stars that have come out of the show and all of the influence they've had beyond the show. The thing that he wants most of all is for SNL to survive as long as it can, and the show is the most important thing. So ultimately he is going to do what he thinks is best for the show, even if that comes at sacrificing pumping up people early in their careers.
I have a dumb question. So for a story like this, you have to call 1,001 people, from the famous to the unknown. How do you keep track of this? What’s your system?
Thank you for asking this question. I have a spreadsheet. It has many tabs. The tabs sort of morph and grow and then condense. I keep track in there of when I've reached out to people, how I've reached out to people, whether they've responded, little notes for things I want to talk to them about, priority for who I want to talk to first. On a story like this, there's been a couple hundred writers, almost 200 cast members, at least that many people who've worked there. Every story I start working on, I fire up a spreadsheet and just start filling in names. Maybe my excitement here is a little sad?
No, it's crucial because literally you realize you're in chaos. People used to use index cards for things like this, which is insane. What are your spreadsheet tabs called?
Well, here I had a list of people who the only way I could figure out how to reach them was if I got a Twitter premium account. So I had filed them away together. Then there’s a group of people who are currently on the SNL staff. I made a list of all the musicians who were in the band at one point.
That’s sick.
Sick is, yes, definitely the right word.
Was there anyone who got away that you really, really wanted to talk to?
I reached out and never heard back from Dave Chappelle. I think he's had a really interesting relationship with Lorne over the years. Lorne really loves him, and there’s something interesting in the way Lorne handles and relates to and interacts with talent like that. And then I'm also interested in someone like Chappelle, why he goes back — he's someone who does what he wants and when he wants, and he came back as recently as last month to host the show.
I did not know until you told me in this piece that he holds the top-three monologue-length records on Saturday Night Live!
Yes. So I think the last one was 16 minutes, 49 seconds. He’s different, but celebrities love doing SNL. There is nowhere else in show business that actually feels like show business, like the Hollywood that you thought you were getting into. And everyone there genuinely is trying to make this thing as good as they can. I will shout out the music documentary that NBC put out called 50 Years of SNL Music, directed by Questlove. For musicians, basically, it's like you go on The Tonight Show, those performances never go anywhere. But there are bands who genuinely do get this huge bump from being on SNL, introducing themselves to a new audience. I heard a story from someone who was with Lorne in Cannes at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc. Jeff Bezos is there. The biggest muckety-mucks in the world are there. Naomi Campbell's trying to get in and she can't get in. You can see Steven Spielberg is out on his yacht, and he's texting Lorne to come hang out with him on the yacht. Mumford & Sons is playing at the party, and in the middle of it, between songs, Marcus Mumford stops singing and points out Lorne in the audience and says, “Lorne, you changed my life. This one's for you.” Of all the people in the room! I think there’s a whole bunch of bands and people like that who view Lorne, and view the show, in that way.
