Lorne Michaels Was Almost the Original Host of ‘SNL’s Weekend Update

One surprising nugget for Saturday Night Live superfans when they see Saturday Night next week? In the film, Lorne Michaels plans to host Weekend Update himself, deciding just minutes before showtime to hand off the job to Chevy Chase. 

That final dramatic detail is stretching the truth — the decision to have Chase host the fake news didn’t happen at the eleventh hour. But Michaels did indeed plan to give himself airtime as the anchorman for Weekend Update. In fact, he originally considered being an SNL cast member.

At least that was the plan “in the earliest presentation because I’d done the equivalent of Weekend Update in Canada,” Michaels told Deadline in 2014. “But as we got closer to air, I began to realize that I didn’t think I could be the person who cut other people’s pieces and left my own in. So I gave Weekend Update to Chevy (Chase), who was not a cast member, but a writer at the time. And that’s how all that happened.”

That’s an incredible sliding-door moment in SNL history. If Michaels had decided to keep the anchor chair, would Chase have had a career at all? He barely had an onscreen resume at that point, becoming the show’s first breakout star specifically because of Weekend Update. America learned his name thanks to his weekly reminder that “I’m Chevy Chase, and you’re not.”

What if Michaels had become a comedy star instead? 

Based on his understated charisma in cameo bits like the time he offered the Beatles $3,000 to reunite on SNL, it wasn’t impossible. “I don’t write anything for myself, but occasionally the writers will put me into something,” he said. “Unless it’s enormously embarrassing, I’ll do it, and even then, sometimes, when it is.”  

And why not? In 1975, he was much more qualified for TV stardom than most of the original cast. He’d been the lead in his own comedy show in Canada, The Hart & Lorne Terrific Hour, which was a lot more than Chase could say.

If viewers had latched on to Michaels, maybe he becomes the father in National Lampoon Vacation movies instead of the daddy SNL cast members long to please. At the same time, Saturday Night Live likely doesn’t last 50 years with Michaels steering the ship for most of its storied run.

But while Michaels didn’t use his on-air experience telling jokes on Weekend Update, he still believes it helped make SNL a success. “I think having been a performer,” he explained, “you have a much greater understanding of what people go through when they’re out there, what they’re thinking and how vulnerable they feel sometimes.”