‘Saturday Night Live’: Lorne Michaels on turning away Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell

With the 40th Anniversary Special of “Saturday Night Live” coming up, we are getting the opportunity today to check out something that is in many ways still a rarity: An interview featuring Lorne Michaels. The showrunner is very particular about his time, and does not give many in-depth chats these days about the history of the show.

This makes his lengthy interview with The Hollywood Reporter this week all the more interesting, as he delves into how he still enjoys doing the show, how he made mistakes in 1985 with his new, super-young cast, and also how he understands that his reputation for being “rough” is something that not everyone is going to like. He also went into a little bit of detail describing some of the now-famous people who did not end up making it on the show. With this being said, it does not really sound like he has any regrets on the decisions that were made:

“Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell auditioned. There were lots of people who you’d see how brilliant they were, but you knew on some level that it wasn’t going to work. Lisa Kudrow gave a brilliant audition, but it was at the time when it was Jan Hooks and Nora [Dunn]. I wasn’t at the Jim Carrey audition, but somebody who was there said, ‘I don’t think Lorne would like it,’ and they were probably wrong, but it doesn’t matter. Or maybe they were right — who knows? No one gets it all right.”

In the end, Michaels has the benefit of things working out well for him. There have been bad years for the show (last year was one of them), but he has the gift of knowing that at the end of the day, his show is still on the air and is an institution. He doesn’t quite have anything to worry about given the list of stars who were born on this show. You know many of them, and we’d be here all day counting them out.

For now, we suggest taking a look at the list of people appearing on the 40th anniversary show February 15; prepare to get excited! Also, sign up to score some additional TV updates via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: NBC.)