The Johnny Carson Story Lorne Michaels Told John Mulaney to Threaten Him

After six-time Saturday Night Live host John Mulaney had spent three or four years on the show as a young writer, the relentless grind was making him “a little cranky,” he confessed as part of the SNL Stories From the Show series. 

His irritation was reaching critical mass one week while working on a Kissing Family sketch featuring Fred Armisen and Bill Hader. At the Tuesday meeting when Mulaney pitched the bit, producer Lorne Michaels asked where the sketch was set. “They’re saying goodbye at an airport,” Mulaney replied.

“You can’t have it at the airport. They have the ropes, the velvet ropes,” argued Michaels, convincing Mulaney that his boss hadn’t spent much time in commercial airports.

Fine, snipped Mulaney. “Where do you want me to set it? I’ll set it wherever you want it.”

Michaels relented. “It can be an airport.”

But Mulaney kept firing back in a snotty-kid tone. “Just tell me where you want it set, and I’ll put it in there. Anywhere. It’s the Kissing Family. It can go anywhere.”

Mulaney explained that was his passive-aggressive way of dealing with unprocessed anger. But rather than snipe back, Michaels would tell stories. “In the story,” Mulaney said, “was the lesson you were supposed to know.”

Michaels saved his Johnny Carson story for a moment during the annual holiday tree lighting outside 30 Rock. Mulaney and writer Simon Rich were taking in the festivities when Michaels approached them.

“We were like, ‘Johnny Carson used to be on the sixth floor?’”

That’s right, Michaels said, though Carson eventually moved to Los Angeles. When the move was announced, “Ed McMahon, of course, suddenly wants a new deal. So he signs with the William Morris Agency. Ed’s agents call Johnny Carson. They go, ‘He wants a higher salary and to have a higher title on the show.’”

Carson’s response to the hardball play? “Fine,” he reportedly said. “We’ll find a different announcer.”

According to Michaels, McMahon freaked out. “He had to call Johnny Carson and apologize. Because it’s that thing of when you have a personal relationship with someone and then representatives get involved and then that person doesn’t really want to deal with you.”

And with that, Michaels walked away. It was Rich who spoke the quiet part out loud: “That story wasn’t about Johnny Carson.”