Tina Fey Claims That Lorne Michaels Has A Bug Named After Him
The American Museum of Natural History once honored Saturday Night Live creator and king-maker Lorne Michaels by naming a creepy-crawly after him so that young comedic actors and actresses can have a second reason to react hysterically to the phrase, “Lorne Michaels is on the phone.”
Tonight’s episode of Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney was supposed to feature an appearance from 93-year-old film legend Rita Moreno who would have joined a panel of Mulaney, Conan O’Brien and Ayo Edebiri to discuss the question of the night, “Are dinosaurs put together correctly?” Unfortunately, Moreno couldn’t make it to the livestream in Los Angeles for yet-undisclosed reasons, so Mulaney filled the spot of the West Side Story star with another A-list leading lady who bears a dramatically different filmography: Tina Fey.
The Saturday Night Live great and 30 Rock creator isn’t a paleontologist, which put her in good company on the anti-science panel from tonight’s Everybody's Live with John Mulaney. But while speaking on her authority to address Mulaney’s dinosaur questions, Fey revealed that she sits on the board of the American Museum of Natural History alongside her old boss Michaels, who is so beloved by the museum that they once named a newly discovered species after him.
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Maybe one day the nerds will throw Fey a bone — the Blerg Beetle just rolls off the tongue.
“I am a long-time board member at the Museum of Natural History,” Fey explained of her scientific credentials, then clarifying, “An honorary board member. For many years, my job has been to coordinate the celebrity chef for the gala, so I don’t know shit about dinosaurs, John.”
When Mulaney inquired about the makeup of the Museum of Natural History’s board, Fey broke it down, “There’s a bunch of scientists, and then there’s a bunch of truly wealthy, generous people, and then it’s like, me and Lorne Michaels.”
“They named a bug after him!” Fey exclaimed of the organization’s infatuation with Michaels, reporting that the actual, official species name of the supposed bug is simply “Lorne Michaels."
However, for all the anti-science rhetoric spouted on tonight’s episode, this little bit may be a bridge too far for the competing fields of entomology and arachnology. While Fey is correct that the Museum of Natural History did name a newly discovered species after the SNL founder, according to Michaels' biographer Susan Morrison, the creature that bears the name “Lorne Michaels” is actually a spider.
I’m sure there are some shitcanned SNL cast members who will agree with the insect and arachnid experts that this is a very important distinction.
