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Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

The real genius of Lorne Michaels isn’t comedy — it’s judgment

Susan Morrison's biography offers the fullest portrait yet of the elusive creator of "Saturday Night Live"

Published July 5, 2026 10:30AM (EDT)

Lorne Michaels isn’t the funniest person at “Saturday Night Live.” But he’s likely the greatest incubator of comedic talent in TV history. And for more than five decades, his real superpowers – editing, producing, channeling anarchy into 90 minutes of live television, surviving in the same time slot since 1975 – have been on display at 11:30 p.m. most Saturday nights.

Michaels, both controlling and reticent, has never opened up like this, and Morrison has talked to hundreds of “SNL” cast members, writers, hosts and more.

Perhaps no show has launched more never-ending debates: When the show was truly great, when the show stopped being funny, whether there’s anything worth watching after Weekend Update and before the truly weird sketch comes on at 10 of 1. The best cast, of course, tends to be your first. It’s never as good as it was when you needed your parents to stay asleep during the local news so you could watch way too late. Maybe that’s just me. But probably not. The catch phrases lodge in your brain, like it or not. The clips boomerang around the internet and get analyzed and recapped for everyone by Sunday morning. Podcasts, good hangs, and Late Night shows feed a never-ending amount of backstage drama and tales of never-seen sketches.

And from Chevy Chase through Michael Che, it’s been Lorne Michaels at the helm for almost every cultural-defining moment. Susan Morrison’s new biography of the “SNL” creator, “Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live,” places Michaels into the same single-name pantheon as his pals Mick and Paul. It is newly arrived in paperback, and a perfect summer page-turner.

Morrison, a longtime editor at The New Yorker, was a young production assistant on one of Michaels’ few failures: the short-lived “The New Show” back in 1984, during his five-year hiatus from “SNL.” It’s a magnificent book: Michaels, both controlling and reticent, has never opened up like this, and Morrison has talked to hundreds of “SNL” cast members, writers, hosts and more. She also spent a week embedded behind the scenes with the show, tremendous access which not only cracks open the mad quest for 90 minutes of live comedy, but helps anchor the book in the current moment as much as 1975.

The Lorne that emerges is one with many superpowers: Discovering talent, yes, but also surviving the years and the weeks when it doesn’t launch — managing creative egos. But perhaps most fascinating is that this is someone who imagined his own life, and then created it, a young Canadian teen obsessed with how comedy works who pulled himself up to the center of the culture, cultivated the good life with celebrity friends, and built and sustained one of the enduring institutions of American culture.

Morrison and I spoke in a loud bar at the Tucson Book Festival. This interview has been edited and condensed.

(Focus Features) Lorne Michaels stars in director Morgan Neville’s documentary “Lorne”

Lorne Michaels has spent his career creating comedy that felt anti-establishment and countercultural. He cares about cool. Yet he also became extraordinarily adept at navigating and thriving within giant corporations. When NBC got bought, he could keep the new Comcast CEO waiting outside his office. How does he flourish in both worlds?

A lot of it goes back to his early years at the Canadian Broadcasting Company. The CBC in those days was a bit like a boot camp for television. It was rather small but also egalitarian. If they gave you a show, they also expected you to do everything. You had to worry about budgets, deal with lawyers, manage crews, rent the studio, budget the carpentry hours, handle costumes. You learned every aspect of the business.

It’s similar to what happens with certain writers at “Saturday Night Live.” People think of them as comedy writers, but many of them end up learning how to run things. That’s one reason so many former “SNL” writers become showrunners.

He’s this child of ‘60s culture, with this original superpower of being able to fit into very square rooms and be heard.

Right, he had this kind of preternatural skill at knowing how to talk to the suits, how to seem levelheaded, how to pretend to be cool and calm, even when he was freaking out inside. Early in his career, he would stand on the studio floor clutching a glass of white wine during the show because it projected an image of nonchalance. It wasn’t real. It was almost a performance of composure.

Not to be too Freudian about it, but his father died when Lorne was 14, and for much of the rest of his life he gravitated toward older men who became mentors or father figures. He was comfortable around them. He knew how to listen to them and how to learn from them. By the time he arrived in Hollywood, he could walk into a room full of 50-year-old executives and make them feel comfortable while still getting what he wanted. I do think that facility ended up serving him incredibly well when he found himself dealing with GE and Comcast executives.

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It’s not just the CBC: It’s as if every stop he makes along the way contributes to the creation of “SNL” long before the show exists.

That was one of the most enjoyable discoveries of writing the book. I almost felt like this life was like a Victorian novel, and every single thing he did along the way offered an opportunity for him to learn some important lessons. When you look back at all of these seemingly random jobs, every one of them teaches him something that later becomes part of “Saturday Night Live.” A good example is his time working with Phyllis Diller. The producers were struggling with how audiences perceived her. She was a famous comic figure, but they wanted to make her approachable. So they created interview segments where she would sit down with guests and talk to them in a more personal way, these fireside chats.

Lorne paid attention to that. Years later, when “SNL” developed its opening monologue, it served a similar purpose. The monologue isn’t just a comedy segment. It’s a way of humanizing the host, whether it’s Adam Driver or Kevin Costner.

You show how his childhood contained many of the ingredients that would later define his life. His grandparents run an arthouse theater. His........

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