Yahoo Lifestyle A New Book Reveals The Alleged Behind-The-Scenes Uproar Among “Saturday Night Live” Staffers Over Donald Trump’s Controversial 2015 Hosting Gig, And It’s Seriously Messy
In its 50-year history, Saturday Night Live has inevitably made a number of mistakes — and many of the show’s staffers apparently feel that inviting Donald Trump to host in 2015 was one of them.
For context, Trump has hosted the NBC comedy show twice: Once in April 2004 and again in November 2015, just five months after he launched his first presidential campaign in June of that year.
As you may know, it’s SNL’s showrunner and creator, Lorne Michaels, who has the final call on which celebrities are invited to host each season. And, according to an upcoming biography about the TV mogul, many of his writers were upset by the decision to platform Trump at what wound up being such a pivotal time in political history.
Previewing journalist Susan Morrison’s upcoming book, Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live, the Daily Beast and USA Today report that Tim Robinson — who worked on SNL from 2012 to 2016 — slammed Lorne over Trump hosting, allegedly saying: “Lorne has lost his fucking mind and someone needs to shoot him in the back of the head.”
It should be noted that Tim did not say this directly to Morrison; rather, someone else she interviewed for the book recalled him saying it during a meeting around the time of Trump’s hosting gig.
The book also includes claims that Lorne had wanted to “tone down a harsh Trump sketch” and allow the Apprentice mogul to show “some charm” in the episode. This apparently led the show’s writers to feel that Lorne wasn’t fully opposed to “helping” his “billionaire friend.”
When Trump was elected a year later, the show’s staffers apparently “felt shame and anger,” with many of them believing that “SNL bore some responsibility for Trump’s win.” However, Morrison claims Lorne felt it was his responsibility to keep SNL unbiased despite the majority of the cast members being Democrats.
“When Michaels had booked Trump to host in 2015, he, like most people, considered the candidacy a big joke,” the author writes. “But it was a lucrative joke. Trump was a ratings magnet: people liked to watch him, either in spite of or because of his noxiousness.”
Amid the internal uproar surrounding Trump’s win, Lorne is quoted as saying about his younger staff members: “It’s the hardest thing for me to explain to this generation that the show is nonpartisan.”
Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about the behind-the-scenes conflict. In 2017, Taran Killam — who was on SNL from 2010 to 2016 and often played Trump — told NPR that Trump’s 2015 hosting gig is “something that only grows more embarrassing and shameful as time goes on.”
“I don’t necessarily put so much weight into [the idea of] Trump hosting SNL helping him become president, but there’s definitely something where it normalizes him and it makes it OK for him to be part of the conversation,” Taran said at the time, adding that he didn’t think the show’s bosses ever fully “considered” the impact that platforming Trump could have further down the road.
“I don’t think it was considered — the implications that it had then and could have moving forward. And I think looking back … there’s nothing good I can take from that week,” he concluded.
Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live by Susan Morrison is expected to be released on Feb. 18.
NFL Rivals Travis Kelce And Jalen Hurts Were Both Asked About Donald Trump Attending The Super Bowl, And The Difference In Their Answers Is Quite SomethingEllen Durney · Feb. 6, 2025
Jenny Slate Revealed The Real Reason She Got Fired From "Saturday Night Live," And 13 Other SNL Cast Members Who Got The BootKristen Harris · Jan. 25, 2025
16 Of The Most Interesting Things We Learned From The "SNL50" DocumentaryCasey Rackham · Feb. 1, 2025
