Firing Norm Macdonald From ‘SNL’ Came Back to Haunt NBC Exec Don Ohlmeyer

The late Don Ohlmeyer would probably understand how it feels to be the post-Luka Dončić Dallas Mavericks. Both NBC executive Ohlmeyer, who insisted on losing Norm Macdonald from SNL’s Weekend Update, and the Mavericks, who thought they’d be better off without a generational basketball player, believed kicking out a franchise icon was the right thing for the team. But neither foresaw the blowback that would ruin their lives. 

Unbelievably, Lorne Michaels had to deal with Ohlmeyer’s tantrums right as the cast was reeling from the death of Chris Farley, according to Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live. Michaels and Ohlmeyer met for dinner shortly after Farley’s funeral, with the executive demanding the firings of both Macdonald and longtime SNL writer Jim Downey. Michaels didn’t need glasses to read between the lines. This was retaliation over jokes about Ohlmeyer’s golf pal, accused murderer O.J. Simpson. 

Michaels often got his way on Saturday Night Live decisions, but he couldn’t talk Ohlmeyer out of this one. Michaels would make changes, but he issued a warning to his boss: “You do not want to pick a fight with a bunch of comedians. Pettiness knows no bounds. They will keep taking shots at you forever.”

After Macdonald left the show, it was only a matter of days before the fireworks began. First up was Macdonald’s appearance on Late Show With David Letterman. Letterman had his own angry memories of Ohlmeyer from his NBC days and as Michaels predicted, comedians’ pettiness knows no bounds.

“Did you get your ass fired?” Letterman asked Macdonald. “I know Don Ohlmeyer, and between you and me, he’s an idiot.”

Macdonald played his usual game of calling heinous people “a good man,” but Letterman was more than happy to swing the baseball bat. Over the course of a single talk-show segment, he called Ohlmeyer a weasel, a pinhead, Mr. Bigshot-Cologne-and-Cufflinks and Happy Hour Don (a reference to the executive’s recent stay at the Betty Ford Clinic). For Ohlmeyer, a guy accustomed to making anonymous decisions from his corner office, it was very public heat on national TV. 

Then came an issue of Time magazine that included a “Save Norm” postcard addressed to Ohlmeyer, the brainchild of Joel Stein, a young Time writer. Pity the underling who had to deliver piles of postcards proclaiming Ohlmeyer a nitwit for his decision.

Then Macdonald returned to host SNL the following season to thunderous applause. Macdonald called out NBC management during his monologue (still absent from SNL’s YouTube channel). “I had sort of a disagreement with the management at the NBC,” he said. “I wanted to keep my job. Right? And they felt the exact opposite.“

Even as NBC backtracked in the face of all the criticism, Macdonald called out the hypocrisy of inviting him back to SNL. “How did I go in a year and a half from being not funny enough to be even allowed in the building to being so funny that I’m now hosting the show? How did I suddenly get so goddamn funny? It was inexplicable to me, because, let’s face it, a year and a half is not enough time for a dude to learn how to be funny! Then it occurred to me: I haven’t gotten funnier, the show has gotten really bad!”

Ohlmeyer continued to get pounded for decades, including punches from his old boss Warren Littlefield. The NBC president was disgusted by Ohlmeyer’s mean-spirited behavior, such as refusing to air ads for Maconald’s Dirty Work during SNL. “Don was first a drunk bully and then a sober bully,” Littlefield wrote in his 2012 memoir Top of the Rock, “but always a bully.”

Like many bullies, Ohlmeyer was used to dishing out the pain but not accustomed to it being delivered right back. After the backlash, according to Lorne, “those were the last swipes that Ohlmeyer ever took at Michaels and his show.”