Saturday Night Live (TV Program)

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    10 ‘Saturday Night Live’ Catchphrases That Readers Love

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    Hundreds of you told us about your favorite “Saturday Night Live” catchphrases. Here are the 10 that came up the most.To mark the 50th season of “Saturday Night Live,” we took a look at 50 memorable catchphrases from the show. We also asked readers to tell us about the ones you use with your friends and loved ones, and why. Hundreds of you responded. Here are the 10 phrases that came up the most, along with stories — some of which have been edited — you shared.‘More cowbell’“As a percussionist I think we ALWAYS need more rhythm in our lives. The skit spurred me to buy my own personal cowbell.”— Sheila Krueger, Phoenix“I teach art. There is often something just not quite right about a painting … it needs something.”— Gerard Brown, Philadelphia“We owned a restaurant. It was the perfect answer to any dilemma or flagging energy.”— Mary Beams, Grand Marais, Minn.“I play in a community band. When something doesn’t sound right someone will shout out ‘more cowbell’!”— Carol McMullen, Bowdoinham, MaineWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Inside Lorne Michaels’s Archive of ‘S.N.L’ History

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      But nothing tested the show like Sinead O’Connor’s musical appearance on Oct. 3, 1992, when she stunned viewers — and the producers — by tearing up a photograph of Pope John Paul II, declaring, “Fight the real enemy.” Two years earlier, O’Connor had drawn wide criticism for joining the cast member Nora Dunn in pulling […] More

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      ‘S.N.L.’ Celebrates 50 Years With Star-Studded Prime-Time Special

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      Stage and audience alike at Studio 8H were packed with cast, alumni and other celebrities in a night that was in turns sweet and self-satirizing.After a half-century of comedy and music (and what at times felt like an equal amount of buildup and hype), how do you at last kick off a prime-time 50th anniversary special for “Saturday Night Live”? Calmly and serenely, it turns out.The long-awaited “SNL50: The Anniversary Special” opened on Sunday with the musicians Paul Simon (an “S.N.L.” stalwart through the decades) and Sabrina Carpenter (who was its musical guest in May 2024) sharing the stage at the show’s familiar home base at Studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.They exchanged a simple joke, setting a theme that would recur for the rest of the night: Time passes, whether you like it or not. Simon said they were about to play a song that he had performed on the show with George Harrison in 1976. “I was not born then,” Carpenter said, “and neither were my parents.”“I’m glad they’ll get the chance to hear it tonight,” Simon replied. And together he and Carpenter performed Simon & Garfunkel’s “Homeward Bound,” the first musical number in a night that also included performances by Paul McCartney, Miley Cyrus with Brittany Howard and Lil Wayne with the Roots.And who else could perform the opening monologue on this occasion but Steve Martin, a 16-time host whose own rising star in the 1970s imparted some needed credibility and momentum to “S.N.L.” when it was just starting out.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How to Watch the ‘S.N.L.’ 50th Anniversary Special

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      The venerable sketch show is throwing itself a big star-studded party on Sunday night. Here’s everything you need to know about it.“Saturday Night Live” is celebrating its golden anniversary this weekend with a star-studded special in its Studio 8H at 30 Rock. You have questions? We have answers.When is the big ‘Saturday Night Live’ anniversary special?“SNL50: The Anniversary Special,” a three-hour event celebrating a half-century of comedy sketches, celebrity hosts, musical guests, standup monologues, fake commercials, performers losing it on national television, driving cats that get into car accidents and whatever the heck “Tiny Horse” is about, will be shown Sunday at 8 p.m. Eastern on NBC and Peacock. And yes, it is airing live.When did ‘S.N.L.’ broadcast its first episode?Back when it was simply called “Saturday Night” — because, at the time, ABC had a variety series called “Saturday Night Live” — the NBC show made its debut on Oct. 11, 1975.So ‘Saturday Night Live’ is celebrating its 50th anniversary on a Sunday months before its actual 50th anniversary?Well, it is currently the 50th season of “S.N.L.” Running the special on a Sunday night in February mirrors a strategy from 2015, when “S.N.L.” held its 40th anniversary show, and gives “SNL50” its own lane on a Presidents’ Day weekend following the hoopla of the Grammys and the Super Bowl, and ahead of the Oscars (March 2). Airing in prime time allows the special to reach a wider viewership and to wrap up in time for Tom Hanks to get his beauty rest.Who are some of the other celebrities scheduled to appear?You can expect venerated “S.N.L.” alums, veteran hosts and friends of the show including Adam Sandler, Eddie Murphy, Tina Fey, Will Ferrell, Chevy Chase, Amy Poehler, Steve Martin, Chris Rock, Maya Rudolph, Martin Short and Robert De Niro, according to NBC.Who were some of the guests who appeared in the 40th anniversary special?The 2015 celebration included sketches and tribute segments featuring Robert De Niro, Martin Short, Maya Rudolph, Chris Rock, Steve Martin, Amy Poehler, Chevy Chase, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Eddie Murphy and Adam Sandler.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘S.N.L.’ Weekend Update: An Oral History of 50 Seasons

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      Roughly midway through the first “Saturday Night Live” broadcast, in October 1975, Chevy Chase, dressed in a suit and seated behind a simple desk with a telephone, read a joke about the new Detroit headquarters for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.The union’s president, Chase said, had remarked that Jimmy Hoffa would “always be a cornerstone in the organization.”Thus was born Weekend Update, the satirical news segment and institution-within-an-institution at “S.N.L.,” a fundamental part of the series for virtually all of its 50 years.While hardly the first TV news parody, Weekend Update is the most enduring franchise of its kind, giving “S.N.L.” its most direct platform to make fun of politics, presidents, global crises and daily oddities.Like “S.N.L.” itself, Weekend Update has been a launchpad for comedy careers. It has also been a crucible of controversy, particularly when its iconoclastic performers have come into conflict with NBC executives who weren’t laughing at their pointed routines.Weekend Update was designed to a satisfy a young audience that was craving topical commentary. “We were following Watergate, the end of the Vietnam War,” said Lorne Michaels, the “S.N.L.” creator and longtime executive producer. “There was a lot going on.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lorne Michaels Reflects on His ‘S.N.L.’ Legacy Ahead of the 50th Anniversary

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      Is it possible that Lorne Michaels is Lorne-ed out?Even for a man who enjoys being famous, all the hoopla surrounding the 50th anniversary of “Saturday Night Live,” all the extra attention it has brought him, has been a bit much.“I say this not with any sense of modesty — I was famous enough,” Michaels said recently at Orso, one of his favorite New York haunts. Someone who knew him once sardonically suggested Michaels would like to have “LEGENDARY” stitched into his underwear. And he is, after all, known in some circles by one name, like Beyoncé, Cher, Ichiro. But Michaels demurs.“Everybody who had to know me, knew me,” he said. “I wasn’t in the public eye. But now, walking over here, a young comedian came up and said, ‘How would I audition?’”I said I would have loved to have seen that encounter.“You would not love that,” he said in his bone-dry voice and signature cadence.Since the 50th season premiered last fall, the anniversary of “S.N.L.,” one of a fragmented America’s few remaining communal cultural events, has inspired a steady stream of tributes to the show and its creator. There was a Jason Reitman origin-story movie called “Saturday Night,” as well as hundreds of feature stories and listicles in the press. Last month there was a four-part docuseries on the show and another documentary on just the music. Friday night brings an “S.N.L” concert at Radio City Music Hall, livestreaming on Peacock. A 600-plus page biography of Michaels titled “Lorne,” by Susan Morrison, an editor at The New Yorker, comes out next week.It all culminates on Sunday with a live three-hour prime-time special looking back on “S.N.L.” and its singular legacy. Like a Veterans Day parade with troops from different wars marching by, “S.N.L.” stars from different decades, among many other celebrities young and old — guests include Paul McCartney, Robert De Niro, Steve Martin, Sabrina Carpenter, Tom Hanks, Kim Kardashian and Dave Chappelle — are swirling around New York, ready to help Michaels celebrate the golden anniversary.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Restaurant Where ‘S.N.L.’ Celebrates Tuesday Night

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      Lattanzi doesn’t exactly scream “celebrity magnet.”Its brick-walled, burgundy-carpeted dining room, lined with black-and-white photos of Rome, feels more antique than affluent. The menu leans on old Italian standbys like veal scaloppine and chicken piccata. There’s no bouncer, no photos of famous regulars, no gatekeeping host. The location isn’t some trendy downtown neighborhood, but Restaurant Row, a stretch of West 46th Street that’s been a theater-district fixture for nearly a century.Yet every Tuesday evening before a new episode of “Saturday Night Live,” Lattanzi is where you’ll find Lorne Michaels, the show’s creator and kingpin, and that week’s celebrity host, along with a rotating cadre of eight or so carefully chosen “S.N.L.” producers, writers and cast members.After decades at the helm — the show will celebrate its 50th anniversary this weekend — Mr. Michaels is well-known for his rituals: the basket of popcorn kept replenished at his desk, the so-called “Lornewalks” he takes to clear his head, and the Monday meetings in his office with the cast and host, said Susan Morrison, an articles editor at The New Yorker who wrote the forthcoming biography “Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live.”Lattanzi, which specializes in Roman food, has been around since 1984. Mr. Michaels has been bringing celebrities and staff members there for decades.Nico Schinco for The New York TimesBut the Tuesday dinners are especially sacred, she said — one of the few predictable events in the weekly lead-up to a show that traffics in unpredictability.“In a week where everything is going 100 miles an hour and everything is hurtling toward Saturday night at 11:30, it was a moment of civilized calm,” she said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The White Lotus,’ Plus 9 Things to Watch on TV this Week

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      The HBO satire of the rich and well-traveled comes back for a third season. And “Saturday Night Live” hosts its 50th anniversary special.Between streaming and cable, there is a seemingly endless variety of things to watch. Here is a selection of TV shows and specials that air or stream this week, Feb. 10-16. Details and times are subject to change.An uneasy vacation.Since HBO’s “White Lotus” and “Succession” have been off the air, what has there been to discuss with your friends or post about on X on Sunday nights? Luckily, “The White Lotus” is back. In its first two seasons, viewers have gone on transcontinental journeys, including an indelicate hotel manager in Hawaii and a strange love square in Italy. And now, the third season is taking off to Thailand, where there promises to be stressful family dynamics, an off-putting couple and of course, lots of suspense and threats of violence and crime. Sadly, Jennifer Coolidge won’t be on this season after she met her untimely demise — or maybe she will be? With the director and writer Mike White at the helm, who truly knows what is going to happen? Sunday at 9 p.m. on HBO and streaming on Max.50 years of ‘Saturday Night Live.’In lots of ways, this whole season has been a celebration of the 50th anniversary of “Saturday Night Live,” but the official pomp and circumstance is kicking off this week with “SNL50: The Homecoming Concert,” a live show from Radio City Music Hall in New York. Hosted by “SN.L.” alum Jimmy Fallon, the show will include performances from over 20 artists, including Arcade Fire, Eddie Vedder and Miley Cyrus. And the best part? You can watch live from the comfort of your home. Friday at 8 p.m. on Peacock.The 50th anniversary special of “Saturday Night Live,” hosted by Lorne Michaels, will look back at the show’s past.Will Heath/NBCLive from New York, it’s … Sunday night? Though the title doesn’t match the timing, “SNL50: The Anniversary Special” is the big three-hour event that rounds out a season full of trips down memory lane and will feature some famous alumni and a look into the show’s history. If you want to get prepped in a different way, the fictional retelling of the first night of the show, “Saturday Night” directed by Jason Reitman, is now streaming on Netflix. Sunday at 8 p.m. on NBC.A resurgence of romantic comedies.Sometimes you’re traveling to Italy for a very pragmatic, very grown-up reason, and all the sudden, you’re swept up into a romance that alters the course of your life. I mean, that’s what I’ve seen in movies; it’s never happened to me. In “The Dolce Villa,” things are no different. Eric (Scott Foley) travels to Tuscany to try to stop his daughter Olivia (Maia Reficco) from buying and restoring an old villa. The moment he arrives in town, he meets the mayor, Francesca (Violante Placido), and you know what they, say: colpo di fulmine. Streaming Thursday on Netflix.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Greatest ‘Saturday Night Live’ Episode Ever*

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      *Well, maybe only to me. “S.N.L.” fans all have their own idea of the show’s peak, and this is mine.As measured by the calendar, “Saturday Night Live” is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. But you could also say that 50 “Saturday Night Lives” are each celebrating an anniversary.There are, of course, those who watch the show every week, every year, and have followed its evolution for decades. But many of us have a singular personal “Saturday Night Live”: a particular season or group of performers that defines the show for us.Don’t take this from me. Take it from Lorne Michaels. “Generally, when people talk about the best cast,” he once said, “I think, ‘Well, that’s when they were in high school.’”I was in high school in 1984. Even back then — those freaks-and-geeks years when you define yourself by your pop-culture obsessions and nerds are most vulnerable to the wiles of sketch comedy — I was only a modest “S.N.L.” fan. I loved “S.C.T.V.” and David Letterman and Monty Python.In college and later, I would move on to “The Simpsons” and other comedy enthusiasms. Sometimes I’d enjoy “S.N.L.”; sometimes I’d hate it; sometimes I’d enjoy hating it. But honestly, for most of my life I’ve thought of it like a public utility — always there, but not something I’d be a “fan” of any more than I’d be a fan of the gas company.But there was a while when “S.N.L.” vibrated on my wavelength, when I was the right age to stay up, when my friends spent every Monday quoting lines to one another in the school cafeteria. I can narrow my “S.N.L.” of choice down to a specific season — in fact, to a specific episode: Season 10, Episode 9, airdate Dec. 15, 1984.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More