In the days before Lorne Michaels and the Not Ready for Primetime Players launched the very first episode of Saturday Night Live (then known as NBC’s Saturday Night), they took a trip two floors down from their own studio in 30 Rockefeller Plaza to promote the program on The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder.
In the lead-up to SNL‘s 50th season and Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night movie, Snyder’s September 1975 interview with Michaels and the cast has resurfaced on YouTube and on social media. It offers a fascinating glimpse at the unassuming group of young comedians who would soon go on to forever change the comedy world.
In the interview, Michaels introduces the then-unknown cast members by name. “We’ve got eight [cast members], and we’re hoping for two to really work,” Michaels joked to Snyder. “Not all of these people will become stars.”
Most of Snyder’s questions were fielded by the then-30-year-old showrunner himself, whose quick-witted quips make him seem more animated than modern SNL fans might be used to.
“We were in the studio all day today and all day yesterday,” Michaels says during the segment, then jokes that “We’re still trying to figure out how to get the people in the little box. That’s the only problem so far.”
Michaels went on to tease the guests lined up for that first show: George Carlin, Janis Ian, Billy Preston, and a new group of “adult Muppets who can stay up late.” He also revealed another soon-to-be familiar element of SNL that was already in the hopper: commercial parodies.
When Snyder suggested that Carlin might do his “seven dirty words” routine live, Michaels replied, “There is a six-second delay—but some of those words have eight or nine letters, so you never know.”
In a prescient moment, Snyder then suggested seven other words that could be detrimental to the show: “Watch Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell.” Cosell’s similarly named ABC variety show had just debuted, which is why SNL debuted under the title NBC’s Saturday Night. Fortunately for the soon-to-be-iconic comedy series, Cosell’s show was short-lived (it lasted just four months). Shortly after its demise, NBC’s Saturday Night rebranded itself as Saturday Night Live.
Two weeks after the group’s late-night sit-down, Saturday Night Live’s premiere would change everything for the group—Snyder included.
Months later, Dan Aykroyd debuted his impression of Snyder on SNL, which proved so popular that he did it a dozen times. The impression gave Snyder a newfound recognition, but SNL itself prompted NBC to demand a younger demographic for The Tomorrow Show—a desire that led to the downfall of Snyder’s program.
Such is the fallout of launching the longest-running sketch comedy show in the history of American television.
