
That there would be a series of documentaries produced in connection with Saturday Night Live’s milestone 50th anniversary season is no surprise. Multiple docs have been released about and around the legendary sketch show over the years, including four feature-length films produced between 2005-2010.
Peacock’s new four-part docuseries SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night, however, is unlike anything that’s come before. To begin with, unlike past works, it was produced by an outsider to the show: Oscar-winning documentarian Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom, Won’t You Be My Neighbor, Piece by Piece).
Neville, a self-described “comedy nerd” whose body of work includes documentaries about Steve Martin and Andy Kaufman was focused, primarily, on satisfying specific curiosities, not on having the last word on all things SNL.
“I didn’t want to be retelling stories. I wanted fresh ground where I could find it, but also four different episodes that collectively felt satisfying.” Neville tells LateNighter.
Each episode of the series is distinct—both in style and focus. It begins with cast members from various eras talking about the show’s infamous audition process, then jumps to a thrilling week-long ride with the writers during an episode from Season 49, then into an exhaustive exploration of Will Ferrell’s “More Cowbell” sketch, before closing with a deep dive into what many consider SNL’s most important failure: its disastrous 11th season.
In an exclusive interview with LateNighter, Neville explains why he chose these four focal points, how he approached some of the show’s controversies, his uncommon access as a project without direct oversight from Lorne Michaels, and how he worked to make SNL’s massive impact more digestible through the human stories of those who craft it.
LateNighter: There’s so much out there about the show and its history, written, filmed and otherwise. I’m curious how previous tellings of the show’s lore influenced what you did.
Morgan Neville: I had been a fan of SNL forever. I’ve read all those books. In fact, when I started this project, I pulled out my copy of Saturday Night: A Backstage History Of Saturday Night Live. That came out in 1986 and it still had my receipt from 1986 in it when I bought it in college. So, I feel like I’ve been prepping for this project for a long time. And essentially going into it, having watched all this stuff, I was like, “What do I, as a comedy nerd, want to see?” And it wasn’t another survey film because SNL‘s done a lot of that.
It was like, I want to do specific deep dives that feel more like little movies about stories that cut through SNL, but aren’t trying to be comprehensive. They’re just trying to tell good stories. And that was the idea going in and we brainstormed up a bunch of ideas, including from the very beginning I knew I wanted to do a “Cowbell” episode because I love getting really specific about something and just because then you can get deeper into process and all the people behind the scenes who make something work and how comedy works in that way.
But in a way, I feel like the show is what I want to see. I mean, hopefully people [will] agree with me, but I feel like as an SNL fan, I don’t want to see another SNL in the 80s or SNL in the 90s kind of thing. I want to hear the stories I haven’t heard. Who knew that Francis Ford Coppola directed an episode of Saturday Night Live in 1986? Stuff like that, which got me more excited.
This project seems to be more focused on the show’s late ‘90s to today era than earlier periods. The Season 11 episode obviously is the exception, but there isn’t a lot from the first five years or the Dick Ebersol years. Was that an effort to take the baton from some of those previous things?
It wasn’t super purposeful. I’d say I could see doing four more.
I would love this to get a Season Two.
Yeah, there are more stories to tell. I’d love that. But also, the first five years, which I loved as a kid, I feel like that story’s been really told. I mean, really told a lot. And in fact, I think even when we had more of it in there, it was the kind of thing that I was like, “I think that’s what can go.” Just because, if you are a comedy fan, you probably are preemptively rolling your eyes whenever you’re like, “Oh, I need to hear about the first five years of SNL. I mean, there literally was a documentary called The First Five Years of SNL that they already did.
Is there a feeling when you’re doing some of these interviews that you have to break through a protective shell over the show that you have to push on to get into some of the messiness? There are some mentions of the controversies that have affected the show, but was there a desire to not really go too much into the messiness of it?
I mean, Season 11 was all a mess.
Well, yeah. I’m talking more about some of the diversity issues that the show has had, things of that nature. Which you did touch on. I don’t want to make it like you didn’t touch on it.
Season 11 does touch on it too. And I actually think, again, that could be a whole other documentary too, just talking about women in SNL is a whole story too. We talk a little bit in the writing episode, too. But I think people who have been through here love talking about the show, and I think a lot of it comes from the top down. Like when Lorne Michaels said, “Okay, you can bring in cameras and you can do all this.” I think everybody was like, “Oh. Well, I guess we’re doing this.” This is not what they normally do, and historically anything that’s been done about the show for the most part has been done internally. So to have external documentary filmmakers come in not working under SNL was a vote of confidence, but I think it gave a little bit [more] objectivity to it. But (it’s) in no way comprehensive in that way.
I feel like in the beginning, bringing cameras into some of these rooms is hard because everybody in the room has an agent and a manager. And I think we had to build a lot of trust with people, particularly in the writers’ episode. People don’t like to be shown failing a lot. Who knew that people are sensitive about that? [Laughs] And part of why we ended up filming with (Season 49, Episode 11 host) Ayo Edebiri… She was great. She was like, “Okay. Whatever goes. It’s fine.” Not every host is as willing to have you bring in cameras and film them. So I think it was just about trying to both get the best access we could get, but still keeping our sense of objectivity about it, too… that we’re still observing this from the outside.
In Episode One (“5 Minutes”) you show that emotional connection for cast members (through them watching their own auditions), why was it important that that was the lead-off for this series?
That episode was the last episode we finished, but so many people got emotional, even more people than are in the cut. But of course, for these people, this is the moment their life changed. So seeing how deeply touched that whole process was, how emotional people got in watching their younger selves – something about it. I just felt like I could watch that for hours.
I thought it was brilliant to put that first.
Yeah, I think when we finished it, we were like, “I think this needs to go first.” I think this episode, it feels like an invitation. It also is a beginning too. It’s like you’re auditioning, you’re finding your way into this world, and then there are certain people who are just so great, like Tracy Morgan. Geez, he just killed it. And Amy (Poehler). So many other people are so great.
All four episodes of SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night are streaming now on Peacock.