Saturday Night Live TV Show • Page 621

morgantayler · Sep 18, 2024

imthegrimace said:

I think they mean Dave

Ohhhh, I’ve seen so many people spell her name wrong that I just assumed that’s what he meant lmao

I also never even think of Dave Chappelle so it didn’t even cross my mind

ItsAndrew · Sep 18, 2024

Sorry I meant Dave Chappelle, they had him host the post election shows after 2016 and 2020

imthegrimace · Sep 18, 2024

They should book her 2 weeks in a row though.

morgantayler · Sep 18, 2024

Halitosis Jones · Sep 18, 2024

Serh said:

feel like beetlejuice beetlejuice will have lost the majority of its theaters by the time keaton hosts

He has another movie coming out that same week in October.

Halitosis Jones · Sep 18, 2024

ItsAndrew · Sep 19, 2024

ItsAndrew · Sep 19, 2024

Some highlights

At this point, with only weeks to go, how are you preparing?

CHE I don’t even think about that stuff until we’re about to do the show because it changes so fast and it has for the past eight years.

JOST The weird thing now is as soon as news like Kamala’s running happens, America just starts debating who’s going to play them on SNL. Before we’ve even had a conversation about it, there’s a list of 10 people who should play Tim Walz.

CHE (To Jost) You kind of started that by having Melissa [McCarthy] play [Sean] Spicer, no? I feel like that wasn’t a thing when I first came here and it became a thing.

I suspect having non-castmembers come in to play politicians doesn’t always sit well with those in the actual cast. Am I right?

JOST If you’re someone in the cast who’s like, “I have a better impression than that person coming in,” it’s probably frustrating. But it’s sort of the reality of our show.

Will James Austin Johnson continue playing Trump or do you welcome Alec Baldwin back?

MICHAELS I think James will be there, but I don’t want to get into what I’m doing.

So, you’re not going to tell me who you’ve got playing J.D. Vance?

MICHAELS No, but I think we have the people to play [the candidates] and it should be fun. And Trump has morphed. James, who I think is brilliant, played Trump as the sort of diminished Trump. The guy at the back of the hardware store holding court, and that played because it felt relevant. But we are going to have to reinvent it again because, well, you saw the debate. One of the great parts of show business is that you can’t come back with the same show. So, all of these characters have to be reexamined, and if it makes sense and feels relevant, you know you’re on the right track. But if it feels like you’re talking to the audience and want to be supported because your values are the same as their values, you really shouldn’t be in comedy.

How much more concerned are you about being politically correct today versus when you started?

MICHAELS We had a bad time when I added Shane Gillis to the cast [in 2019]. He got beat up for things that he’d done years earlier [racist and homophobic jokes] and the overreaction to it was so stunning — and the velocity of it was 200 Asian companies were going to boycott the show. It became a scandal and I go, “No, no, he’s just starting and he’s really funny and you don’t know how we’re going to use him.” And when he came back to the show last year [to host], we saw, “Oh right, he’s really talented, and he would’ve been really good for us.” Now, his life turned out well without SNL, but my point with it is everything became way too serious. It was like a mania. And the velocity of cancellation — and lots of people deserved to not be liked — it just became not quite the Reign of Terror, but it was like you’re judging everybody on every position they have on every issue as opposed to, “Are they any good at the thing they do?” I do think that period is winding down and, I believe, the people who do awful things will still be punished.

Is there a host you wish you’d snagged but never did? A white whale, if you will.

MICHAELS We tried very hard for Clint [Eastwood], particularly in the seventies. Movie stars in that period did not do television. Occasionally they did with us, but there was a real chance of being humiliated in front of millions of people and we don’t pay anything, so you’d have to do it because you were game for it. In the end, pretty much everyone has [come on], so there’s no one out there where I go, “Oh, if that person would just do it, my life would be complete.”

CHE I’m fortunate enough to have had a lot of white whales come through — Sandler, Murphy, Chappelle. My white whale at this point would be Denzel Washington. He’s kind of our Brando, and it would be amazing to just see him be silly and funny.

There’s been so much attention paid to Lorne’s retirement plans in recent years, though looking back it seems he’s the one who first started the post-50th rumors.

JOST Of course. It’s almost like he had a plan.

In 2020, he said he deserved to wander off after the 50th. So, what do you think changed?

JOST Well, I think he said that anticipating that end goal, the same way by the end of a season we’re all like, “We’re going to take the summer and disappear and not do anything and not talk to anyone and maybe not come back,” and then the summer passes and you’re like, “Oh yeah, it’s fun.” I think he thought of the 50th that way, too. At that time, it was three or four years away and he was like, “After that, I don’t want to do it anymore.” Then, as it’s getting closer, I think he’s realizing that he loves doing it and I’m not surprised at all that he’s now like, “I’ll stay.” I always thought that was just him strategically announcing it and having that end goal, but never necessarily intending to [leave] then because it’s what he loves doing.

Lorne, what changed?

MICHAELS I think the times, and also there are not many network shows left, and this one has taken on [an importance]. It’s more about keeping it on course than anything else, and, obviously, I really love it. And every year there are more and more people that I rely on for other things, but, in the end, you really need someone to say, “This is what we’re doing.” So, I don’t really have an answer; I just know that this is kind of what I do and as long as I can keep doing it, I’ll keep doing it. There’s no immediate plan.

Internally, it must have prompted conversations about succession. What have those entailed?

JOST You’d think there was a lot of speculation about it internally, but there really isn’t because no one who works there thinks he’s leaving. Everyone is busy figuring out whatever the bigger problem there is that week. I think everyone thinks we plan way more ahead than we do. But you do have to deal with all the speculation [from the outside] and everybody asking you, “Who’s it going to be?”

CHE Maybe a lot of it has to do with being a child of divorce, but I don’t want to think about Lorne leaving. I mean, really, nobody wants to face the reality that, at some point, he won’t be doing it.

JOST And all the people that are being talked about as possible successors, no one wants him to leave and no one wants to have to follow him.

CHE Honestly, I don’t think it could ever be done by one person again. I think it will be a full committee. The show is in his image. I think people will appreciate when it’s not around anymore how much he actually has done for comedy. Any other show loses a star like Will Ferrell, and the show is not the same. SNL has lost maybe 30 of the biggest comedy stars of all time, and it’s still on and relevant.

JOST It’s actually humiliating for Will Ferrell.

CHE Yeah, he should have left a bigger mark. (Laughs.) But it’s a testament to how great Lorne is at the show and how special the show is to people. Just the interest in who’s doing it next shows how important it still is to people. I mean, people get mad at us for who we let host. It’s like a right to be able to host, like they’re running for Congress or something.

Colin, Michael, you’ve both flirted with the prospect of leaving the show yourselves. Colin, you wrote about leaving in your book …

CHE (To Jost) When’s your book coming out? [Jost’s memoir, A Very Punchable Face, was published in July 2020.]

JOST I’ll send you another copy.

What is your current relationship to the show?

CHE I think “Update’s” good, but the only reason I think that is because people are willing to tell me it was bad. You only know you’re doing OK when people tell you that you used to be terrible.

MICHAELS Six or seven years ago, somebody high up at the network who never asked me SNL questions out of respect said, “ ‘Update’ with Jost and Che, do you think that’s working?” And I said, “No, not yet.” And he said, “Oh, you know.” I’m like, “Of course I know, but there’s a chemistry there.” And we’ve had lots of good combinations, but these two just brought out the best in each other. Like, who else could make jokes about Colin and Scarlett [Johansson, Jost’s wife]? And the joke swap? Whatever hostility you thought was lurking below the surface, that is all visible in the joke swap, but it’s meant to be funny and it’s truly funny. I just like that Che can take these positions, which kind of fly in the face of the values of most of the audience, and he’s funny and they laugh and they like him.

When it comes to the joke swap, what are the ground rules? As in, where is the line?

CHE I don’t know that there is a line. I think anything can work given the circumstance, and also nothing can work given the circumstance. So, my thing with joke swap, which is the most stand-up thing that we do at SNL, is that the audience just has to believe that I’m trying to embarrass Colin and that this really bothers him and vice versa. And if that comes across, they’re not thinking about the content of the joke. So, it’s not, “Oh, that’s a racist joke,” it’s more, “Oh, I can’t believe he’s going to make him say that out loud.”

Do you ever get nervous about pushing too far?

CHE No. And I feel bad that it’s no, because maybe it shouldn’t be no. And there’s stuff I’ll want to try and they’re like, “You can’t do that,” and they may be right, they may be saving my career, but in my head, that’s why the show is live. Some stuff can’t work so that when stuff does, it feels like magic.

Why do you think you’ve both ultimately stayed at the show?

CHE My mortgage! No, we love it. We love the show. And it’s a weird thing because you get moments where you love it so much that it drives you crazy and you want to be as far away from it as possible.

JOST It’s like when you play golf, a lot of times it’s very frustrating and there are times where you certainly consider quitting, but then you hit a good shot and you’re like, “Whoa, I love this game. I should do this all the time.” And that’s the way it is with SNL. When everything comes together and all the costumes look great and the timing is perfect and the crowd’s good, you’re just like, “This is the best job in the world.”

CHE And we’ve been doing it so long that it just becomes part of what you do. I mean, it consumes so much of your thought process, you start thinking in jokes and dreaming in jokes.

JOST The nice thing about the beginning of every year, like the beginning of a school year, is you don’t know exactly what it’s going to feel like and it’s probably going to be different than the other ones. So that’s always exciting, at least for a little while.

MICHAELS Everybody in the off-season speaks so fondly of the job and then they get back into it and go, “Oh my God.”

So, will you be here at this time next year?

JOST I’m going to be living in this room either way at that point.

CHE I try not to think about it because then I think it ruins the morale for the rest of the year. I just, I don’t know, you never know. Hopefully I say something and I don’t make it through the year.

JRGComedy · Sep 19, 2024

ItsAndrew said:

Some highlights

Thank you for pulling these quotes out!

I want all three of these people to leave the show so badly.

ItsAndrew · Sep 19, 2024

Lorne’s taken on the Shane Gillis hiring is…not great.

JRGComedy · Sep 19, 2024

ItsAndrew said:

Lorne’s taken on the Shane Gillis hiring is…not great.

Not at all!

Nor is his take on maybe not letting JAJ do Trump this season. My god, there’s 20 people on the cast, surely you can trust someone you pay six figures to do what they’ve been hired to do?

trevorshmevor · Sep 19, 2024

Alec Baldwin gets to portray Trump for like four fucking years but Lorne’s gonna boot JAJ because they “can’t come back with the same show”?? I know switching up impressionists is nothing new for SNL but come the fuck on

JRGComedy · Sep 19, 2024

I truly think as long as three of the lamest comedy administrators out there are in charge, the show’s gonna continue to be incredibly frustrating.

I do think Jost’s biggest sin is maybe just being a yes man? Listening to The Lonely Island podcast has sorta recontexualized him a bit for me.

Zachary Dresch · Sep 19, 2024

Jost and Che being on the show this long is so stupid. They may be good joke writers but they’re so incredibly meh at it. You’d think after ten years, their delivery at punchlines would get better but it’s actually gotten worse.

Zilla · Sep 19, 2024

JOST If you’re someone in the cast who’s like, “I have a better impression than that person coming in,” it’s probably frustrating. But it’s sort of the reality of our show.

This was apparently one of Taran Killam's gripes. He reportedly had a great Trump and they instead went with Alec Baldwin.

I fully expect the frustrations to get worse now that Lorne isn't going away and Che/Jost can stay forever. One of the virtues of the show through the decades was, for better and worse, the cast, including Weekend Update anchors, would leave after a given time to allow for other people to take their place. If you're one of Lorne's favorites, apparently you can stay for however long you want.

Also, the Trump JAJ just shows how much Lorne loves unforced errors. Absolutely no reason to replace him, but sure, let's do that to probably make way for another celebrity to steal a spot.

Zachary Dresch · Sep 19, 2024

Zilla said:

This was apparently one of Taran Killam's gripes. He reportedly had a great Trump and they instead went with Alec Baldwin.

I fully expect the frustrations to get worse now that Lorne isn't going away and Che/Jost can stay forever. One of the virtues of the show through the decades was, for better and worse, the cast, including Weekend Update anchors, would leave after a given time to allow for other people to take their place. If you're one of Lorne's favorites, apparently you can stay for however long you want.

Also, the Trump JAJ just shows how much Lorne loves unforced errors. Absolutely no reason to replace him, but sure, let's do that to probably make way for another celebrity to steal a spot.

I hated Baldwin’s Trump too. At least James’ was like able

Zilla · Sep 19, 2024

Baldwin's is only decent when compared to Jim Carrey's absolutely abysmal Biden.

JRGComedy · Sep 19, 2024

Lorne’s “you saw the debate” comment implying that Trump is apparently coherent now is extremely lame.

imthegrimace · Sep 19, 2024

JAJ trump is easily the best one out there

morgantayler · Sep 19, 2024

Whoever did the Shai Halud Trump video was pretty good lol

Zilla · Sep 19, 2024

Also, by all accounts, Lorne loved Gillis and wanted to let the controversy blow over. If there was no protest, he would still be on there, which is also weird because it fails to mention that was also the year Bowen was cast. And no one watched the show he hosted and thought "Talented guy! Should have kept him on there!" And I say that as someone who finds some of his standup funny.

iCarly Rae Jepsen · Sep 19, 2024

He and Tony are really the only people who get how sad and weird 45 is

imthegrimace · Sep 19, 2024

JAJ just gets everything down perfectly, the mannerisms, the speech patterns etc not just the voice.

imthegrimace · Sep 19, 2024

Like this so perfect for 2020 trump

Jason Tolpin · Sep 19, 2024

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