When Donald Trump was invited to host “Saturday Night Live” just months after launching his presidential campaign in 2015, the decision stunned staffers and left months of lingering tensions behind the scenes, per The Daily Beast. Previewing the upcoming book “Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live” by Susan Morrison, the publication notes that then-writer Tim Robinson was quoted as saying series creator and showrunner Lorne Michaels had “lost his fucking mind” bringing Trump to the show. Robinson, who would go on to co-create and star in Netflix’s sketch series “I Think You Should Leave” in 2019, was working on the writing staff after having previously been a cast member.
“Lorne has lost his fucking mind and someone needs to shoot him in the back of the head,” Robinson is as saying around the time of Trump’s hosting spot, per Morrison’s book. (That anecdote is not a direct quote from Robinson to the author, but rather another person’s recollection of Robinson’s reaction.)
“It’s the hardest thing for me to explain to this generation that the show is nonpartisan,” Michaels is later quoted, speaking roughly a year later in the weeks before Trump was elected President over Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton. “We have our biases. We have our people we like better than others, but you can’t be Samantha Bee.”
Morrison’s book also shares that some staffers recalled that Michaels had wanted to “tone down a harsh Trump sketch” and allow the then-candidate to flex “some charm.” Michaels is also recalled to have stated that he viewed Trump’s presidential candidacy as “a big joke” at that stage, and had not seriously considered the potential for him to win the office. After the episode, “SNL” staffers “continued to feel that they were responsible for the national disaster” of Trump’s election.
In 2021, “SNL” inflicted more internal tensions on its staffers by inviting Elon Musk to host. The billionaire, who has now become a Trump confidante. Last year, cast member Chloe Fineman shared that Musk made her cry during his week on the show: “I just saw some news article about Elon Musk being like butt-hurt about ‘SNL’ and his impression. … I’m gonna come out and say at long last that I’m the cast member that he made cry. And he’s the host that made someone cry. Maybe there are others.”
Random House will release “Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live” on Feb. 18, two days after the 50th anniversary “SNL” special airs on NBC. Read a more comprehensive synopsis of the book’s account of Trump’s hosting stint and the lingering tensions among “SNL” staff at The Daily Beast.