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Saturday Night Live star Sarah Sherman revealed she was overcome with emotion, all thanks to her paycheck. However, it had nothing to do with the amount she's making as one of the show's best performers.

Speaking on Vulture’s Good One podcast, Sherman recalled receiving an unexpected envelope in the mail. Inside was a handwritten note that left the late-night TV star in shock

“I got a giant envelope in the mail,” she told host Jesse David Fox, “with a handwritten letter that was like, ‘Hey, I’m Gilda Radner’s brother. Weird thing happened where I’ve been receiving all of your residuals checks for the past few months.’”

Apparently, a mix-up at the Screen Actors Guild led to Sherman's paychecks getting sent to the estate of the Saturday Night Live legend. Radner was part of the original 1975 cast and remains one of the most influential comedians in the history of comedy.

This year’s milestone 50th anniversary celebration of Saturday Night Live likely felt like a family reunion for Abby Elliott.

After her four-season run on the NBC sketch comedy show from 2008 to 2012, the Golden Globe nominee recently opened up about her family’s legacy on the show, which includes dad Chris Elliott‘s 1994-’95 run and her uncle Steve Higgins’ was co-head writer from 1995 to ’97, having since served as a producer on SNL.

“I mean, it’s wild,” she said on SiriusXM’s The Julia Cunningham Show, noting that Higgins is “my mom’s sister’s husband. … I mean, something in the Niedert women. I mean, they must just like funny men.”

Abby’s cousin and Steve’s son John Higgins has been on the show since 2021, appearing as part of the comedy trio Please Don’t Destroy. The group frequently pokes fun at their own “nepo baby” status, with Martin Herlihy,...

Of all the members of Saturday Night Live’s Five Timers Club (those celebs so hilarious that SNL asked them back to host at least five times), Buck Henry is clearly the most obscure. While Henry did his share of acting, he’s most well-known as a comedy writer, the pen behind classics like The Graduate, Catch-22 and Get Smart. But besides Steve Martin, Henry was the original cast’s most popular host, headlining the show 10 times between 1976 and 1980.

In 1979’s Rolling Stone Visits Saturday Night Live, Henry introduced the Not Ready for Prime Time Players. “Personally, I have never thought that they were very funny,” he explained. “What they have engaged, by doing whatever it is that they do, is not so much my admiration as my sympathy.”

Here are Henry’s scorching-hot roasts of each of the early SNL comedians…

Dan Aykroyd

“I did not believe in extraterrestrial...

Unless you've been on an arctic expedition during all of 2025 or in a coma, you are no doubt aware that "Saturday Night Live" has celebrated its 50th anniversary. As part of the celebration, the comedy institution produced a series of documentaries, held a massive homecoming concert at Radio City Music Hall, and aired a live primetime special on NBC.

That this momentous event occasioned a spate of critical writing from just about every outlet worth its weight in clicks was hardly surprising. "SNL" has been a reliable generator of takes from tepid to scorching since it premiered on October 11, 1975. It has been accused of being too political or not political enough, too liberal or too conservative, and, worst of all, unfunny. At several junctures, critics have called for it to be cancelled (and it very nearly was after the disastrous season 11), while there have been stretches of time where it...

Audacy today announced that it has signed a multi-year contract extension with comedy icons Dana Carvey and David Spade, deepening its collaboration on the hit podcast “Fly on the Wall” and marking a format expansion that will integrate both “Fly on the Wall” and its spin-off “Superfly” into a unified video and audio podcast experience.

The trailer for the new “Fly on the Wall” episodes will be released on Monday, June 23, followed by the first new episode on Thursday, June 26, 2025. Beginning June 30, new episodes will be released weekly on Mondays and Thursdays.

The first new episode on June 26 will feature special guest Julie Bowen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LFvz-mo5lE

A fan favorite and fixture on the top podcast charts since its launch in January 2022, “Fly on the Wall” has become essential listening for Saturday Night Live enthusiasts and comedy lovers alike, earning the show an iHeartPodcast Award...

After NBC got wind of Shane Gillis’ history of homophobic and racist remarks on podcasts, the comedian knew the writing was on the wall. He was out at Saturday Night Live before he’d even set foot at 30 Rock. He understood NBC’s decision, but in 2020, he told a radio station in New Haven, Connecticut, that he never intended to apologize for jokes he’d made in the past.

The night he was fired was when things really got interesting, Gillis said on the Chaz & Aj in the Morning show. “I was literally on the phone from September 12th, which is when this happened, for three weeks,” he said. “It was crazy, just nonstop on the phone with somebody — agent, management, NBC, somebody.”

Gillis’ message to his management team: “No apologies.”

Why was the comic digging in his heels? “First off,” he said, “there’s zero apology that anybody on Twitter will ever accept.

Not every Saturday Night Livesketch works. And even more, not every Saturday Night Live sketch ages well. There are plenty that are racist, homophobic, ableist, sexist, and more as time has gone on. Every era of the show is guilty of it and the 50th celebration of the longstanding show took a moment to call out those sketches that Lorne Michaels probably wishes people forgot about. But on Amy Poehler's podcast, Good Hang With Amy Poehler, she spoke with fellow Saturday Night Live alum Will Forteabout the sketches that haunt them and shared some wonderful insight into it all.

Comedy is an ever-changing medium. You have to grow with it and, as Forte pointed out, while there were plenty of moments on the show that weren't great, it made him realize that it was all about an audience laugh, no matter how you got there. "There are so many...

Amy Poehler reflected on the culture of comedy at Saturday Night Live during her time at the late-night show, saying that some sketches have aged poorly.

During a recent episode on her Good Hang with Amy Poehler podcast alongside guest and friend Will Forte, whose time on SNL intersected with Poehler’s, the two discussed how much comedy has evolved since their time on the Lorne Michaels-helmed series.

The topic came up when the two comics recalled an instance at a table read during a sexual harassment seminar, where they were “drawing pictures of dicks or something,” Forte remembered.

“We were consensually and appropriately, just with each other, I believe, drawing pictures of penises and giving them back and forth to each other,” Poehler said, adding that she then accidentally handed that paper to the seminar leader.

Forte then commented that as a young comedian, “it’s all about getting the laughs,...

Will Forte knows he was not the right performer to take over as George W. Bush on “Saturday Night Live” after Will Ferrell.

During his guest appearance on the latest episode of “Good Hang with Amy Poehler,” Forte told Poehler that he knew immediately it was the wrong call to cast him as Bush after Ferrell departed the sketch comedy series in 2002. “It was a huge cast. It was like 17 people,” Forte recalled of his “SNL” class. “You’re trying to get your stuff on, right? You’re trying to get noticed and then I got, somehow, the George Bush role.”

“I don’t do impersonations, and it was a match not made in heaven,” Forte said. “[Will] made it such his own thing that they should have just retired it. But, of course, you can’t retire the sitting president on ‘SNL.’ Somebody has to be doing it, and I...

The comedy world is littered with duos who couldn’t hang for the long term — so much so Lorne Michaels, who appears on this list of comedy partnerships that imploded, has another one that’s not even cited here: Susan Morrison’s new Michaels biography tells the story of how he parted ways with his comedy partner Hart Pomerantz a few years before creating Saturday Night Live. The feud between Golden Girls co-stars Beatrice Arthur and Betty White is also well-known, but the thing about a good piece of gossip is that there’s almost always something more to unpack. And some people who worked on the show behind the camera have been sitting on stories for a while.

The Golden Girls is in the midst of a 40th-anniversary celebration, including a live reading of two episodes that closed out the Atx TV Festival earlier this month, attended by several...

Tim Bagley is looking back at trying to land a role on Saturday Night Live.

In a new interview, the 67-year-old actor – who has appeared on shows including Grace & Frankie, Will & Grace, Web Therapy, and Somebody Somewhere – recalled being a member of the sketch comedy troupe the Groundlings back in the 1980s.

Despite being a part of the group that launched the careers of many SNL stars, Tim claimed that back at that time, he couldn’t audition for the NBC sketch comedy series because he was a publicly out gay man.

Keep reading to find out more…“I was out as a gay man and people knew that they would not hire openly gay people,” Tim alleged on The Julia Cunningham Show, referencing SNL boss Lorne Michaels and late manager Bernie Brillstein.

“[They] had kind of a thing where they did not hire gay people, so I never got to audition,...

Even though Dana Carvey was never part of the same Saturday Night Live cast as Tracy Morgan, anytime the 30 Rock star would bump into the Wayne’s World star, he’d refer to him as “alum”.

It’s a feeling that only 165 other people know.

And Carvey, who was a cast member between 1986 and 1993, is responsible for some of SNL’s most iconic characters including Church Lady, Gareth Algar and Hans.

“We understand the glue and the wig, and the cards as well as the adrenaline rush of it and really being under prepared most of the time,” Carvey told Deadline.

But it wasn’t until the launch of his Fly on the Wall podcast, the SNL oral history show that he hosts with David Spade, that he really realized what being a part of this institution meant.

“It gave us more empathy. Even really successful cast members are a...

Nate Bargatze is hosting the 77th Emmy Awards later this year so he stopped by The Late Show to get some advice from host Stephen Colbert.

Colbert hosted the Emmys in 2017 when they aired on CBS, which they will again this year.

Bargatze admitted he was “nervous” to host the event, which takes place at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on Sept. 14.

When asked by Colbert if he had any plans, Bargatze said he was “going to rely” on Colbert.

“Did you watch all of the shows? I haven’t watched all of the shows,” he said.

“No, I don’t have time for TV,” joked Colbert.

“I’m just going to do what I do, I’m very self-deprecating and try and bring it inward. I know it’s a tough thing, you’re up for all of these awards so I want everybody to have a good...

Saturday Night Live boss Lorne Michaels is facing some serious accusations from a veteran actor who claims being gay kept him from getting an SNL audition. And it's not the first time the topic has come up regarding Michaels.

Former Groundlings member Tim Bagley discussed Saturday Night Live during an appearance on The Julia Cunningham Show. Bagley claimed that despite his success with the improv group, he never got the opportunity to audition for Saturday Night Live.

Bagley said the reason was because he "was out as a gay man.” He went on to say that it was widely known SNL "would not hire openly gay people."

“All my friends did, and I was always kind of a standout at The Groundlings, but I was out,” Bagley, 67, said. “That’s the problem with being out back then was there were no guardrails. I mean, if somebody didn’t want to have you on their show,...

Will Forte brought Amy Poehler to tears on Tuesday’s episode of “Good Hang” by performing a song from his legendary “Saturday Night Live” audition.

Poehler specifically asked Forte to talk about one character he played in his “SNL” audition that was never actually featured in any of the sketch comedy series’ episodes. Forte obliged, explaining that one of his most popular bits from his pre-“SNL” improv days was a sketch involving a gold-skinned street performer whose day is ruined when a thief steals the few dollars he has accrued.

When a young boy later gives him some money, the performer breaks out into a shockingly raunchy song detailing the extreme lengths he goes to in order to afford his gold face paint. Forte’s “Good Hang” performance of the song made Poehler cry with laughter and provoked more than a few offscreen laughs from the podcast’s producers and crew members,...

Director Jared Hess was behind the camera for the 2025 hit A Minecraft Movie. He didn't have the same success with Masterminds in 2016 -- but nine years later, the crime comedy is now a big hit on Paramount+.

Per FlixPatrol, Masterminds is No. 3 on the Paramount+ movie charts. The crime comedy stars Jason Sudeikis and Owen Wilson, both of whom are now leading their own sports shows on Apple TV+ with Ted Lasso and Stick respectively, opposite Zach Galifinakis as folks who plot an $18.8 million robbery.

The movie is ranked just behind the Jack Quaid action comedy Novocaineand the 2009 Jason Bateman comedy Extract. Masterminds is more popular than two Tom Cruise blockbusters: Top Gun: Maverick and Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning.It’s also ahead of the comedy classics Mean Girls and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.

Masterminds was directed by Hess, who has also helmed other cult...

If only Lorne Michaels and prominent Saturday Night Live alumni could have had a little warning that they’d be doing a 50th anniversary show in 2025. Oh wait…

Michaels has been talking about preparing for the big show since at least 2021, when he told Gayle King at CBS Mornings that he planned to keep his SNL producing duties “until its 50th anniversary, which is in three years.” In other words, he was thinking about the show halfway through Season 47.

But despite years in which to get a few sketches written in advance, old procrastination habits die hard. “There was so much more lead time, but just like our regular show, I’d say 90 percent of it got written in the week leading up to it,” confessed Colin Jost to Variety. “So, it was stressful for six months for everyone.”

Jost and company had plenty of excuses, none of which stand up to scrutiny.

Tim Bagley recently appeared on Radio Andy’s “The Julia Cunningham Show” and revealed that he was never given the opportunity to audition for “Saturday Night Live” due to his sexuality. He also opened up about the struggles he faced growing up gay in a society and household that labeled his identity a mental illness.

TV’s Unsung Gay Icon: Tim BagleyThe Julia Cunningham ShowListen on the App

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“I was out as a gay man and people knew that they would not hire openly gay people,” Tim said about the “Saturday Night Live” audition process years ago.

“It was Lorne Michaels and Bernie Brillstein had kind of a thing where they did not hire gay people, so I never got to audition,” the “Somebody Somewhere” continued. “All my friends did, and I was always kind of a standout at The Groundlings, but I was out, and...

For years, Sam Fragoso reminded Seth Meyers this week on the Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso podcast, people have been speculating that either Meyers or Tina Fey would be the logical successor to the 80-year-old Lorne Michaels on Saturday Night Live. Since Meyers already had a tryout with Fey to host Weekend Update back in the day, said Fragoso, would Meyers consider auditioning with Fey to share the SNL producer job if and when Michaels left?

While the tag-team notion was kinda nuts, Meyers found it amusing to imagine what that audition process would be like. Walking around the Studio 8H stage trying to do the best Lorne imitation? “The one thing Lorne definitely wants,” Meyers joked, “is whoever replaces him to do an impression of him the whole time.”

All jokes aside, Meyers is flattered that his name is brought up in connection with the job, considering his lowly...

Ask most anybody who’s ever worked at Saturday Night Live to describe their experience and you’ll hear the most harrowing responses … uttered in the most affectionate tones.

“SNL is built on Add, procrastination and people who can really focus at the very end of the day — it’s also a psychological torture chamber,” says Dana Carvey, castmember from 1986 to 1993.

Such animated takes aren’t just reserved for the on-air talent. “There’s the very familiar diarrhea cramps of which many have spoken about,” says Paula Pell, a writer from 1995 to 2013. “You get the cortisol back when you’re there, like somebody gave you 18 niacin pills and you’re just flushing in hot panic. But it’s exhilarating.”

Paula Pell (center) backstage at the 50th with wife Janine Brito, Sarah Silverman and Kim Kardashian NBC/Kevin Mazur/NBC/Getty Images

The 2024-25 season provided many with the opportunity to...

Seth Meyers may not always be a fan of media outlets’ coverage of Donald Trump, but the NBC host was pretty delighted by the New York Times’ summary of the president’s arrival at the Kennedy Center this week. In fact, he thinks it deserves a Pulitzer for just how passive aggressive it was.

On Wednesday, Trump and his wife attended the opening night of “Les Misérables,” a story entirely centered on a peasant harshly punished for a minor crime, as well as a revolution in France against the king. Upon their arrival, they were both cheered and booed, and Trump couldn’t give an answer on the red carpet as to whether he identified more with the protagonist or antagonist of the show.

During his “A Closer Look” segment on Thursday, Meyers latched onto the New York Times’ description of the president’s arrival, which read: “It was probably...

“SNL” fans know Mikey Day as the guy who turns up in a bunch of sketches every week, maybe as the father who gets into traffic arguments that require lots of hand gestures and signs or in a longstanding impression of Donald Trump Jr.

Behind the camera, however, Day is increasingly known as someone who can help everyone from Kate McKinnon to Tom Hanks go viral — even if the average viewer of the long-running comedy showcase has no idea of his unique abilities.

Without Day and his writing partner, Streeter Seidell, there would be no David S. Pumpkins, the kooky Halloween figure who even made his way into an animated special at NBC, or Miss Rafferty, the strange woman who is often kidnapped by aliens. Last season, Day helped conceive of a sketch in which he played a man who looked a lot like the famous MTV cartoon figure — and...

One of the true musical geniuses of the 20th century, Brian Wilson, just passed away at the age of 82. The Beach Boys legend is best remembered for masterpieces like Pet Sounds and the troubled Smile — and not for the time he serenaded the Tanner family on Full House, which Wilson himself didn’t remember doing.

The Beach Boys obviously had a ton of songs about surfing, from “Surfin’ U.S.A.” to “Surfer Girl” to “Surfin’ Safari.” Then there’s the hauntingly beautiful “Surf’s Up,” which feels more like a rainy funeral than a day at the beach.

But despite the fact that his music was at the forefront of surf culture in the ‘60s, Wilson didn’t actually surf. As he told David Letterman in 1988, he tried it only once, but quickly abandoned the activity when the board nearly took out his eye.

Wilson has told this anecdote multiple times over the years,...

In the mid-1990s, NBC decided it wanted out of the Adam Sandler business. That is, until it wanted back in.

In January 1995, producer Lorne Michaels was summoned to the office of NBC honcho Don Ohlmeyer, who wanted Sandler and Chris Farley fired from Saturday Night Live. Michaels fought back. “I said, ‘Don, it’s generational. For you, a good show is Bill Murray as the lounge singer,’ ” Michaels remembered, according to Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live.

Michaels was able to shield Sandler for a while, but Ohlmeyer eventually got his way. Michaels worked out an agreement with their agents, and both Farley and Sandler were out, ostensibly to work on movie projects. Neither comic wanted to go, but at least their success at the box office served as revenge.

The movies were so popular, in fact, that NBC realized that maybe it had made a mistake.

Thirty years after it debuted in theaters, fans of arguably Chris Farley’s greatest movie seem to be hungry for nostalgia. Released in 1995 and co-starring David Spade and Brian Dennehy), Tommy Boy is one of Farley’s most quotable and memorable movies. Now,it’s achieving success on streaming three decades after its theatrical premiere.

Tommy Boy, directed by Peter Segal and written by Bonnie Turner and Terry Turner, is currently the No. 9 movie on Paramount+, per FlixPatrol. It edged out Sonic the Hedgehog 3,which is No. 10, for ninth place in the top 10 in the U.S. on the streamer.

Tommy Boy Sits at No. 9 Currently Image via FlixPatrol Audiences Love Tommy Boy

The movie stars Farley as Tommy Callahan and Spade as Richard Hayden. After Tommy’s dad, Big Tom (Dennehy), dies suddenly, Tommy and Richard hit the road to save the Sandusky, Ohio-based family business, Callahan Auto Parts.

One of Elaine Benes’ defining characteristics, in addition to her keen fashion sense and a supreme talent for muffin innovation, is the fact that she’s an absolutely horrendous dancer. In Season Eight’s “The Little Kicks,” George gets an eyeful of Elaine’s jerky moves during an office party, which he later describes as a “full body dry heave set to music.”

While the episode may be considered a classic today, prior to filming the scene, Julia Louis-Dreyfus had some serious concerns about this particular plot point. And they had nothing to do with potentially pissing off Lorne Michaels, whose real-life leg kicking antics inspired the storyline.

In the episode’s DVD commentary track, which was recently shared on the Seinfeld YouTube account, Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander and writer Spike Feresten discussed the dance, with Alexander asking his co-star, “How much did you hate doing this? Because I remember a quote from you…...

It was a late Thursday morning in 30 Rock and “Saturday Night Live” head writers Kent Sublette, Streeter Seidell and Alison Gates were running on caffeine and willpower. As per “SNL” tradition, they stayed up all night Tuesday writing potential sketches for the week’s show. Then, on Wednesday night, they picked the sketches that would move forward for the penultimate episode of the season with host Walton Goggins.

This was on top of a star-studded 50th-season special in February with icons like Eddie Murphy, Steve Martin, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Will Ferrell gracing the 8H stage once again. Oh, yeah, it was an election year, too.

“It was just kind of a swirl,” Seidell said of the season, which also saw cameos from the likes of Adam Sandler and Dana Carvey each week as the show celebrated its cultural legacy. He added, “Your brain just has to file it away as regular work,...

In the early 1980s, Paul Reubens was killing it as one of the stars of the L.A.-based comedy group, the Groundlings. What came next? “SNL was absolutely the Holy Grail,” Reubens says in the documentary, Pee-wee as Himself.

Reubens, Phil Hartman and other improvisers from the Groundlings would watch Saturday Night Live and scoff at the show in the way only jealous comedians can. “(We’d) suck our teeth at stuff, and be like, ‘After all these years, the sketches still don’t have endings!’” Reubens remembered.

But despite the grousing, “we still all wanted to be on the show,” Reubens confessed. “We still all thought, ‘This is it.’”

The Groundlings, like Second City in Chicago, was one of the places Saturday Night Live recruited new talent. In 1980, all of the original cast, along with producer Lorne Michaels, moved on to movies and whatever else came next. That...

Jake Sumner’s Ron Delsener Presents star, wearing a 99 Elvis Costello Armed Funk Tour badge from 1979 (presented to him by music producer/99 Records founder Ed Bahlman) with Anne-Katrin Titze at the Quad Cinema Photo: Ed Bahlman

Jake Sumner’s stellar Ron Delsener Presents (a highlight of the 2023 edition of the Tribeca Festival) on the great impresario features insightful remembrances from Billy Joel (Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin’s Billy Joel: And So It Goes was the Opening Night selection of this year’s Tribeca Festival), Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Steven Van Zandt, Cher, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley (from Kiss), Jon Bon Jovi, Bette Midler, Verdine White, Jimmy Buffett, Lorne Michaels, Sparkie Martin (promoter), Lenny Kaye with Patti Smith and more.

Jake Sumner with Ed Bahlman and Anne-Katrin Titze on The Clash at The Palladium: “David Johansen and Andy Warhol and obviously Ron and of course The Clash,...

Saturday Night Liveseason 50 star, Ego Dwodim thought she was going to be fired while playing Miss Eggy. The character appears in Weekend Update as Nwodim's stand-up persona, as she claims to be talking about only the food at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. However, Ego's sketch goes to another level as she raises her microphone to the audience, and they curse, leaving Ego and the Update anchors in shock and laughter.

Dwodim describes her surprise when the audience cursed as she held the microphone up to them while doing her bit as Miss Eggy in a new interview with Deadline. Despite that unexpected response from the spectators, Dwodim enjoyed doing her Miss Eggy sketch because she got to have fun with not only the Weekend Update hosts Colin Jost and Michael Che, but also with the audience as she was poking fun at herself and improvising with the audience members.

Tires season two rolled out on Netflix today, Thursday, June 5. Riding shotgun in the Shane Gillis-vehicle are his friends and creative partners for a decade, co-star/writer Steve Gerben and writer/director John McKeever. (For the sake of the analogy, picture a 1970s Chevy Bel Air front bench seat.)

Well, really, it is McKeever (who professionally goes by just “McKeever”) steering the car with Gerben navigating — or vice versa. The 6’3” Gillis is stretched out in the backseat — that’s where the celebrity goes — but he’s not merely along for the ride. We’ll stop forcing the metaphor immediately.

Gillis is a co-creator of the series and number one on its call sheet. He’s also the guy who paid out of pocket to build the Tires set.

Tires was originally shot as a 10-minute pilot for YouTube and sold as a series to Quibi. Unfortunately, Quibi lasted about...

Exclusive: Conan O’Brien, who hosted the Late Night franchise for more than 16 years, is finally returning to the scene of the crime.

O’Brien will return as a guest on Late Night with Seth Meyers on Wednesday June 11.

It marks his first appearance on the show since he left for a brief stint on The Tonight Show. It comes a year after he made his guest debut on that show, which is now hosted by Jimmy Fallon.

The move means that all three former Late Night hosts – O’Brien, Fallon and David Letterman – will have appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers.

Meyers teased O’Brien’s appearance at last week’s FYC event in LA with The Studio’s Ike Barinholz.

“I’ve spoken to this person, and I think it will happen soon. They’ve expressed their desire to do it. There’s only been four of us...

When George Carlin hosted the first-ever Saturday Night Live, he made Lorne Michaels livid when he went rogue doing a comedy monologue. During the live show, Carlin swapped out a stand-up bit from his new album for the one he’d performed during rehearsals. “That fucker,” growled Michaels from the control room. It wasn’t that Michaels preferred the original set of jokes — he was worried that Carlin’s unrehearsed routine could go long (or short), screwing up the show’s timing.

So it was mind-boggling to learn that Michaels gives free rein to Dave Chappelle when he hosts SNL — at least when it comes to the comedian’s monologue. “As a tradition, I never do my actual monologue in rehearsal,” Chappelle told fellow comic Mo Amer during a conversation for Variety. “To Lorne Michaels’ credit, he never knows what I’m going to say.”

Play

For proof, look no...

Unless you’re an SNL completist or a 55-plus fan who stayed up late in 1980 to catch Rodney Dangerfield, you likely haven’t seen one of the most offensive SNL sketches in the show’s history.

The sketch aired on the show’s fifth season, that weird year in which a watered-down version of the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players still performed, but without crucial talents like John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase. They were replaced by Spinal Tap’s Harry Shearer, future Letterman bandleader Paul Shaffer and famous brothers Peter Aykroyd and Brian Doyle-Murray. You didn’t see much of those guys during the SNL50 retrospectives.

Dangerfield was the host, and after his monologue, Lorne Michaels and company decided that the first sketch should feature Harry Shearer as a South African spokesperson for a gold coin that commemorates the labor of those who made it possible: the N*ggerrand.

SNL Meets Blt. Is Michaels Adapting McNally’s Memoir?

Looks like Lorne Michaels may have found his next prestige project — and this one comes with steak frites and a side of passive-aggressive Instagram feuding. Sources tell Rambling Reporter that the Saturday Night Live creator has optioned Keith McNally’s dishy new memoir, I Regret Almost Everything, which charts the legendary restaurateur’s rise, fall, stroke, suicide attempt, recovery and general disappointment with humanity. In other words, comedy gold.

McNally, of course, is the onetime Brasserie King of Manhattan — the man who, as The New York Times once put it, “invented downtown” with such ’80s and ’90s hotspots as Odeon and Balthazar. More recently, he’s drawn attention for his unfiltered Instagram account — a kind of running off-off-Broadway one-man show where he’s taken aim at everyone from James Corden (banned from Balthazar in 2022 for alleged omelet-related rudeness) to Jessica Seinfeld...

Dakota Johnson had some last-minute regrets about her outfit choice on “The Tonight Show” on Monday night, so Jimmy Fallon provided a quick fix in the form of a tissue. The NBC host then joked that he’d sell it online afterward.

The moment came right at the start of Johnson’s appearance in support of her new film “Materialists,” which hits theaters on June 13. As she sat down, she looked downward and uttered “Oh god” as she seemed to realize her skirt rode up a bit high and the neckline of her top showed a lot, given the angle of the camera.

“This is the wrong outfit,” Johnson said with a chuckle.

“I think it’s perfect, just don’t move” Fallon replied, prompting Johnson to joke that “my eyes are up here.”

The duo then recalled their experiences with the “SNL50” celebration, with the actress noting that she...

The stars are stepping out for the 2025 Peabody Awards!

Kerry Washington, Jon Hamm, Anna Kendrick, and Benito Skinner were among the many celebs in attendance at the 85th Annual Peabody Awards on Sunday night (June 1) held at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles.

Since 1940, the event, created by the University of Georgia’s Grady School of Journalism and Mass Communication, honors celebrate excellence in entertainment in documentary, news, podcast/radio, arts, youth and public service programming.

This year’s honorees included Netflix’s Baby Reindeer, FX’s Shōgun, and Peacock’s We Are Lady Parts while Saturday Night Live‘s Lorne Michaels was presented with the Institutional Award.

Comedian Roy Wood Jr. served as host for the evening.

Following the event, we compiled photos of the stars in attendance so that you can see who was there.

Keep reading to find out more…Keep scrolling to see the stars at the event…...

The 85th Annual Peabody Awards offered a night where truth was the headliner, courage was the theme, and storytelling wasn’t just celebrated—it was revered.

Roy Wood Jr., host of the American adaptation of Have I Got News for You on CNN, emceed this year's award show, held at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel on June 1. "This is a little different from [hosting] the White House Correspondents' Dinner or the Writers Guild Awards,” Wood told Gold Derby before the show. “These people here tonight have told very serious stories about very serious things. I have a degree in journalism, so a night like this is just special to me on a lot of levels."

The Peabody Awards touched on everything from the personal trauma of transitioning (Will & Harper) to the institutional failures behind the Pulse nightclub shooting (Pulse: The Untold Story). From war zones in Gaza to privatized prison walls, the...

“Saturday Night Live” concluded its 50th season last month as the highest-rated entertainment series on broadcast television among Adults 18-49 and was also the most watched comedy across broadcast and cable for the sixth consecutive season, according to ratings data released by Nielsen on Monday.

Factoring in Live+7 across all platforms, the late night sketch show averaged 8.1 million viewers during the 2024-2025 television season, up +12% vs. Season 49 and marked the show’s best numbers since Season 47 (2021-2022).

“To see the show honor its legacy while still pushing boundaries was incredible. The strong ratings this season are a testament to how deeply ‘SNL’ continues to resonate with audiences,” said Katie Hockmeyer, Executive Vice President, Late Night, NBCUniversal Entertainment. “After five decades, ‘SNL’ remains a powerful force in shaping culture and making us laugh week after week.”

“Saturday Night Live”

Mary Ellen Matthews/NBC

To celebrate the milestone 50th season, four specials were produced,...

Saturday Night Live went all out this year with its 50th anniversary and its ratings have reflected that effort.

NBC has revealed that Season 50 of the late-night show hit a three-year rating high – it became the most-watched season since Season 47, which ran between October 2021 and May 2022.

Season 50 averaged 8.1M viewers across all platforms, per NBC, in the live+seven days metric. This was a 12% increase on Season 49. Nielsen said that the show averaged 7.2M viewers last season.

Season 47, for context, drew 9M viewers in the live+seven numbers.

Last year, NBC touted the youth numbers and the Lorne Michaels-created show remained the number one entertainment series across ad-supported broadcast and cable in the 18-49 demo for the 2024/25 season for the sixth consecutive season.

“To see the show honor its legacy while still pushing boundaries was incredible. The strong ratings this season are a testament to how deeply SNL continues to resonate with audiences,...

Marc Maron, whose podcast show had become an increasingly popular listen with fans of the medium, has announced that he plans to put a close on the series. The comedian launched Wtf with Marc Maron on September 1, 2009, which had joined the likes of podcast from fellow comedians Bill Burr and Joe Rogan. Maron’s show was also an institution in the community as he welcomed guests like Jeff Ross, Sir Paul McCartney, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, SNL creator Lorne Michaels and Barack Obama.

Deadline reports that Maron revealed the news on the newest episode released today, where he stated,

Sixteen years we’ve been doing this, and we’ve decided that we had a great run. Now, basically, it’s time, folks. It’s time. Wtf is coming to an end. It’s our decision. We’ll have our final episode sometime in the fall.”

Maron...

Exclusive: A podcast institution is coming to an end. Marc Maron’s Wtf podcast, which has had close to 2,000 episodes since its 2009 launch, will be turning off its microphones in the fall.

Wtf with Marc Maron has been one of the most popular podcasts in the world, arguably kicking off the booming trend of audio series since launching on September 1, 2009.

The series has had 1.1B downloads, listens and impressions since its launch with 1,645 episodes as well as more than 300 bonus episodes for premium subscribers.

“Sixteen years we’ve been doing this, and we’ve decided that we had a great run. Now, basically, it’s time, folks. It’s time. Wtf is coming to an end. It’s our decision. We’ll have our final episode sometime in the fall,” Maron says on the episode released today.

Maron has interviewed comedy greats, A-list actors and Presidents. His June 2015 interview with...

After announcing its full list of winners last month, the Peabody Awards celebrated those honorees in person Sunday night with a ceremony hosted by Roy Wood Jr. in Los Angeles.

The comedian kicked things off inside the Beverly Wilshire by joking, “Last year’s host was Kumail Nanjiani, so that is back-to-back years with a minority host. The Peabodys standing up for diversity, how about that? Which means in a few months, the White House will cut their funding and so they’ll have John Mulaney, that’s on y’all.”

The event honored 34 winners across entertainment, documentary, news, podcast/radio, arts, children’s

and youth, public service, and interactive and immersive programming, with a focus on storytelling that reflects the social issues and emerging voices of today. Baby Reindeer, Ripley, Shogun and Will & Harper were among the recognized Hollywood projects.

“We’re celebrating the fact that everyone in this...

Peabody Award winners sounded the alarm on the threats to democratic norms, criminal justice reform and forward progress in diversity and inclusion goals as the 85th annual kudos were handed out Sunday in Beverly Hills.

Meanwhile, “Saturday Night Live” chief Lorne Michaels spoke from the heart as he accepted the Peabody’s Institutional Award for his enduring NBC sketch comedy series. It’s the sixth Peabody in total collected by the storied late-night show that bowed in 1975.

Referring to the “SNL50” specials that aired in February, Michaels said, “All those people coming back from the first season on, all being in one room performing and applauding was one of the most moving experiences of my life.”

Michaels, 80, also made what seemed to be an oblique nod to the endless churn of speculation about the long-term plan for the show.

“I’m not planning a 60th,” he said after referencing “SNL...

Focus Features has done a full takeover of the Angelika Film Center with The Phoenician Scheme on all six screens for filmmaker Wes Anderson’s latest. There’s a lobby and café redesign for full immersion, a jazz band, custom cocktails, t-shirts and totes as the film, which clocked a lengthy standing ovation at its recent Cannes world premiere (see Deadline review) bows theatrically in limited release at six locations including NYC’s Alamo Brooklyn and AMC Lincoln Square and AMC’s The Grove, Century City and Burbank in LA.

Around this time in 2023, Anderson’s Asteroid City, also from Focus, delivered a massive jolt to the arthouse and specialty world with a $790k three-day weekend, also at six theaters, including a takeover of the Landmark LA. That opening per-theater average of $132k was the biggest in years for a helmer known to energize the specialty box office. His Grand...

Saturday Night Live’s 50th anniversary show was mind-blowing for Eddie Murphy, for all the obvious reasons. But one fact in particular caught his attention. “It was a trip,” he told Jennifer Hudson this week on her eponymous talk show. “Because everybody was real old.”

No kidding. Octogenarian Lorne Michaels produced the show, a birthday party attended by 77-year-old Jane Curtin, 81-year-old Chevy Chase and 88-year-old Garrett Morris. Murphy appeared in comedy sketches with youngsters like Will Ferrell and Tracy Morgan, both of whom are pushing 60. Murphy himself is 64, an age that qualifies him for Denny’s senior breakfast menu.

“I got on that show when I was 19 years old,” Murphy said. “I went back, and I saw all these people 40 years later. It was just a trip.”

“I felt like I was part of something,” the comedian continued. “That show was on for 50 years, so it's this American institution.

By all accounts, Lorne Michaels is a challenging boss. People who have worked for him have said he can be imperious, dismissive and careless with employees’ feelings and self-worth. Even Seth Meyers — who, between Saturday Night Live and Late Night, has worked for Michaels nearly half his life and is clearly grateful for the opportunities Michaels has given him — has no compunction about describing how strange it can be to interact with someone who’s run his own TV fiefdom for decades.

At the Atx TV Festival’s opening night marquee panel on May 29th, Meyers remembered the phone call in which Michaels told him he’d be the next host of Late Night, saying Michaels’ way of giving information is “like a follow-up call to a conversation you never had,” sliding into an impression of Michaels vaguely saying he thought Meyers would be good, in time. Meyers didn’t hang up and say,...

Seth Meyers is a person who doesn’t seem to have trouble filling his time. He’s been the host of Late Night With Seth Meyers since early 2014. He co-hosts the podcasts Family Trips With The Meyers Brothers with, as you might guess, his brother Josh, and The Lonely Island With Seth Meyers Podcast with, as you might also guess, The Lonely Island. He’s also partially responsible for the care of his three children and an Italian greyhound named Frisbee. Yet a segment of the population can’t stop fantasy-casting him into the role of Saturday Night Live’s next showrunner.

The question of who would succeed creator Lorne Michaels in running SNL has long been a topic of idle speculation. But this year’s celebration of the show’s 50th season has cranked it up several notches, since Michaels himself told Gayle King, back in 2021, that if he...

Right now, it’s unclear who exactly will be pretending to have a fun social life before slowly turning to the camera and smiling in the opening credits of Saturday Night Live’s 51st season. There were rumors that Colin Jost might be hanging up his Weekend Update smirk for good, but nothing’s been confirmed.

Similarly, fans began to suspect that Bowen Yang may be done at SNL after he gave Sarah Sherman an “end of E.T.-sized hug” during the season finale’s goodnights. And Sherman herself joked about leaving the show during Scarlett Johansson’s monologue.

It's not unusual for Lorne Michaels to make his employees anxiously wait out the summer months before finding out if they will have the job in the fall or not, and now longtime cast member Kenan Thompson has seemingly confirmed that there will be a major shake-up at SNL. Although he provided absolutely no details,...

After the sketch comedy's milestone 50th season, Saturday Night Live veteran Kenan Thompson teases major changes ahead. The iconic NBC series recently wrapped a big celebration, putting a bow on its 50th installment. But more so than in other recent years, there have been questions over which cast members might not be back for Saturday Night Live season 51. It's a question that has received a bit of attention on SNL itself, often through quick jokes by the performers.

Speaking to Page Sixat the Reel Works 24th Changemakers Gala, Thompson shared that SNL season 51 will see a lot of changes and revealed that he hasn't negotiated a new contract yet, though he hopes to return. Thompson, who joined the sketch comedy back in 2003, making him the show's longest-tenured cast member, talks in the quote below about the feeling of wishing everyone could stay:

“Especially this year where it feels like there’s maybe,...