For 50 years, Lorne Michaels has helped turn up-and-coming comedians and actors into global superstars. The man clearly knows talent, screen presence, and star quality when he sees it, but he’s not what you’d call a star himself.
This was never more clear than on Valentine’s Day in 1983, when he appeared on Late Night With David Letterman and… oof.
It’s interesting, of course, to see the two late-night heavyweights share the stage, but it’s not “15 minutes on a talk show” interesting. Michaels seems to recognize this in the moment, as he continually comments on his own performance as a guest while it’s going on.
At one point as he tells a story about NBC censors insisting he cut a SNL sketch between dress and air, amid the silence from the audience something can be heard off-camera falling to the floor. Michaels and Letterman share a knowing glance and laugh. They know this isn’t going well.
It’s an odd piece of television from an odd time. This was the era when Michaels and Saturday Night Live had parted ways—he had left the show in 1980 to explore other options, and the show had one season produced by Jean Doumanian, and was two seasons into its Dick Ebersol era at this point. Michaels isn’t promoting a project or discussing anything new, just talking about SNL, where he would return two seasons later in 1985, and remains today.
It’s not Letterman’s best work, nor is it Michaels’ finest hour. And it wasn’t a great day for another soon-to-be late-night star: In the closing seconds, Letterman reveals that due to going over their allotted time, they’ve had to bump comedian Bill Maher.
