Behind-the-Scenes Stories From the Week Donald Trump Hosted ‘SNL’
Lorne Michaels seems to believe he was doing America a service in 2015 when he enlisted Donald Trump to serve as the show’s host while he was running for President of the United States, according to the biography Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live. Rather than promoting his candidacy, Michaels said, “We were alerting the audience that this guy is actually going to be the candidate.”
Whether or not you believe Trump's appearances on SNL and Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show legitimized his run, his week preparing to host Saturday Night Live was predictably bonkers. Here are a few behind-the-scenes glimpses at the madness…
Ivanka’s New Nickname
One sketch featured Trump visiting the Disneyland Hall of Presidents with daughter Ivanka. The sketch ended, according to Colin Jost, with Trump telling Ivanka, “Told you!” Then the two would head out of the hall, with Trump calling out their next eating destination: “Turkey legs!”
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But The Donald couldn’t remember not to run the two lines together, making it sound like he had a new pet name for his daughter. “Told you, Turkey Legs!”
The Loser Tree
Trump refused to do another sketch based on the Shel Silverstein children’s book, The Giving Tree, remembered Michael Che. In the book, the titular tree gives and gives of himself until there’s nothing left but a stump. In the sketch, the Trump Tree would be part of the same forest, calling the Giving Tree a sucker for being so generous. Did Trump refuse because the sketch made him appear to be a selfish dick? Nope — he hated the costume, fearing that his head poking out of a hole in a tree outfit made him look like a loser.
Reading Is Fundamental
Trump “doesn't really know how to read,” Pete Davidson said on the Opie Radio podcast. “He loves to improv. So during the table read, before he had to read each line … he would go, ‘I’m not going to say this. I think I’m going to say it the way I want to say it. Is that okay, Lorne?’”
Writers on the show also noticed that Trump stumbled over words in the script and was especially challenged by punctuation, according to the Lorne biography. (For an example, look no further than “Told you, Turkey Legs!”) But his poor showing during rehearsals didn’t dent Trump’s confidence. “He thinks everybody's laughing with him, but we're all laughing at him. He would be like, ‘I did a good job, right?’” Davidson remembered. “He constantly kept saying how amazing the ratings were going to be. He’s like, ‘This is going to be number one.’”
Making Trump Likable
Trump angered cast and crew during read-throughs by taking phone calls during the rehearsal. “My book just went to number one!” he bragged after hanging up.
No one was impressed. Writers were already mad that Michaels had asked them to ease up on Trump earlier in the season, asking them to give their Trump character “some charm” like Alan Rickman, the bad guy in Die Hard. Tim Robinson, then a writer on the show, wasn’t having it. “Lorne has lost his fucking mind,” he said, “and someone needs to shoot him in the back of the head.”
