This is a fantastic picture of the larger than life SNL figurehead Lorne Michaels. Susan Morrison dives deep into the life of Lorne Michaels through detailed research and exclusive interviews. With this, Morrison is able to bringing us closer to understanding the man, the myth and the legend behind SNL.

The book takes us behind the scenes of Michaels' creative journey, exploring the challenges he faced, his unique leadership style, and the groundbreaking moments that led to SNL becoming a cultural institution. Morrison's access to Michaels, along with insights from people who’ve worked with him, gives readers a rare look at the complexities of his character and career.

For anyone curious about the man behind SNL and the impact he’s had on comedy, Lorne is an essential read. It’s an insightful and captivating look at a true pioneer of television.

Full disclosure--I am a massive SNL fan and am so thankful to Ballantine for the opportunity to read it ahead of time. Highly, highly recommended.

“Loving the show is like loving humanity and yet not liking people”.
—Lorne Michaels once told a reporter — paraphrasing Dostoyevsky.

Having now watched the SNL 50th Anniversary special …. as well as Susan Morrison’s 656 page book, “Lorne”…..
one might think I’m *Lorne Michaels/SNL* saturated….but I’m not.
Between the TV special and this master-of-all-biography-memoirs….I’m actually more interested in watching past episodes of SNL more than ever.
I wasn’t a regular SNL watcher ….(I was sleeping)….but now that we can tape shows ….. (past SNL shows are recorded on Peacock to stream), my husband and I are both excited to begin watching…..(adding past SNL episodes to our Jimmy Kimmel, Steven Colbert, and Jimmy Fallon entertainment fix).

I wasn’t sure this biography would be for me > I was afraid I wasn’t worthy …. (Swear to God).
But 10 minutes into the SNL Anniversary Sunday night special — I knew I wanted to read this Biography.
I feel as though I’m - actually- catching up with holes into the culture I grew up in.
I’m 70 years old ….so SNL is surely a part of my own history.
Thankfully I still have time to do some SNL repentance.
I’m happy to have the time and opportunity to backtrack years of comedy that I missed.

As for this FANTASTIC Biography….its downright fascinating and stimulating….interesting and inspiring. Happy & sad, rock-out brilliantly researched and written. Masterfully epic.
We learn about the history of SNL and Lorne Michaels.
…..the culture, the funny jokes, the music, the celebrities we adore and who have entertained us for years, (in movies, etc).
We learn about the writers of the show, they trials and tribulations from behind-the-scenes, ……
And we learn much more about Lorne Michaels: coming of age, family history, …. raised in a middle-class Jewish family in Toronto to being the most primetime Emmy award winner in TV history …..it’s all in this book …..and more .
THIS BOOK DID SOMETHING TO ME….. it’s very moving….(Lorne’s humanity and vulnerability affected me to my core).
I’m feeling a little teary …. and thankful. I had no idea how much I needed this book …. It’s the perfect antidote for our current frightening unsettling days…..
a truly remarkable biography! It couldn’t have come at a better time.

I fully connected with Lorne on a primal level over the lost of his father. And the many ways his father’s death affected his life…..both negatively and positively.
I read that section with my heart in my throat - my mouth open. I had a similar experience. I was four when my father died. “The worse that could happen had happened, and the shine went out of everything.”

“The tendency toward catastrophic thinking sparked by his father‘s death was turning out to have a possible upside that served him well when he was in charge. If you’re always afraid that life can devolve into chaos without warning, you become vigilant about order. You become a person with a clipboard, or a producer

When Lorne was a young teen, a teacher told him “Read till your eyes fall out of your head” ….He did!!! he read fat Victorian novels, Romantic poets, Shakespeare, the newspaper,….etc.
This little tidbit was just one of many ‘feel-good’ moments ….reflecting on the ways Lorne gobbled up knowledge. His calm focus and leadership is a rarity….
I just didn’t get how much so until recently.
What a culturally phenomenal man Lorne is
And Susan Morrison ….. Congratulations on such outstanding work!!!

A couple more excerpts….(just for fun)…. > We could read this book several times and keep discovering something!

“Dazzled by the spectacle on stage, Lorne daydreamed about various forms of show business—acting, writing, directing, even singing. As a thirteen-year-old at Camp Timberlane, Ontario, he explored his impresario side. ‘Your parents ship you off for eight weeks, he said. ‘And it’s the best part of the year for you and the best part of the year for them’”.
At thirteen, Lorne was cast as Captain Hook and the recent Broadway hit Peter Pan.

“Having been infused with the romance of Hollywood since childhood, when a grandparents’ movie talk dominated the household, Michaels arrived in Los Angeles at a peculiar time.
The week before he left Canada, the California mood-flower children slouching through the Summer of Love—shifted abruptly; Robert Kennedy was shot at L.A.’s Ambassador Hotel. I literally watched it on TV in Toronto and then went to LA., where it happened, Michaels said. But when he landed, the sun glinting against the purple hills, steadied his nerves”.

“Old Joke: A Restaurant Has two tanks of lobsters, one with a lid, one without. The chef explains: ‘The first tank is for American lobsters. Without a lid, they’ll escape. The second one is full of Canadian lobsters. It doesn’t need a lid: every time, when tries to climb out, the others pull him back down”.

Brilliant, compassionate…. I feel fuller, more educated, and more human having read this book!

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC of this title.

I am absolutely the target audience for this book - I'm a big fan of Hollywood biographies, love a longread from the New Yorker, and can't get enough of how-the-television-sausage-gets-made explainers, and this happens to be all three. Kudos to whoever saw the opportunity to release this two days after the 50th anniversary special.

The structuring of the book is fantastic, alternating between a week in the life of how an episode of SNL happens from start to finish (in this case, the episode Jonah Hill hosted in 2018) and the story of how Lorne Michaels got his foot in the door in Hollywood enough to make the show, then shepherded it through some of its rockiest periods.

Despite general reticence from those who've worked on the show to speak poorly on the record about Lorne (the book's only weak point - it never truly gets to full warts-and-all biography, but the same complaint could be lobbied at all the media in the past few months leading up to SNL's big bash), there's still enough downs mixed in with the ups to keep this compulsively readable.

Thank you SO much to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for sending me an ARC of this book!

I've always been a big SNL girl and this year has been FULL of exciting content for the anniversary season. Right now truly felt like the perfect time to read about the man who’s been running the show (literally) for decades. SNL has continued to be such a cultural influence, I was excited to dive into this book, and overall, it was a really interesting look at Lorne Michaels’ influence not only in the comedy world but in television.

One of my favorite things about this book was the structure. It’s broken up by days of the week, which is such a smart way to mirror the relentless cycle of putting together SNL. It also was one of the more unique layouts I've seen for the autobiography/biography genre. The structure of a week is so well known that it helps to emphasize the sense of the controlled chaos behind the scenes of the creation and production of the show. There are a lot of great details about the show’s evolution, the legendary cast members, and how Lorne has kept it all going for so long. That said, he still feels a little mysterious by the end. You for sure get a solid overview of his impressive career, but not a super personal look at the man himself. Valid though, and very cool that he's still had a private life after all these years.

I've spent the majority of 2025 watching Saturday Night and the SNL 50 specials so I am fully on board for all things on this topic right now. Still, even the casual fan would find interest in the behind the scenes of such an iconic person in the industry.

What a fascinating cultural history of Saturday Night Live! I remember being at college and seeing the very first episode.
This book is such a well-written chronicle of its beginning up through the present. It can certainly appeal to everyone whether they have a passing interest in the show, but it will, undoubtedly, be especially nostalgic for those of us who grew up with it.
It's particularly well-written and the extensive research done by the author is so obvious. I couldn't wait to turn the page to see what anecdote popped up next. It is especially timely with all the hoopla currently surrounding SNL"s 50th anniversary. A great read!

Thank you Random House and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review!

I am a child of the 90’s. My first introduction to SNL was when “Lazy Sunday” was a free download on iTunes. In college it was cool to watch SNL, but I cannot honestly say I am a super fan. The behind the scenes has always interested me, though, so in that way this book very much so scratches the itch of “How did this cultural phenomenon come to be?” The author thoroughly researched Lorne in order to write this book and did a great job of covering so many aspects of his life. I will say, however, at times it was extremely hard to make myself keep reading due to the writing style. The number of asides (why were there so many asides) started to get old in the very beginning. I kept reading, again, because the book was very well researched and contained good information. I think most people will enjoy this book because of the SNL 50 milestone and the interest it and the documentaries surrounding it has piqued.

OMG!! I am a huge fan of Saturday Night Live and have been watching since I was young. This is a book for any fan to have in their personal library to re-read and enjoy for years to come. The book is well researched and very informative about Lorne Michaels from childhood to present. I also like reading about how creative Michaels becomes as an adult and first has an idea for a comedy show. I cannot believe it has been 5o years of SNL already!

HIghly recommended book/biography. I really enjoyed this.

THanks to Netgalley, Susan Morrison, Lorne Michaels and Randpm House Publishing Group for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Available: 2/18/25

Incredibly thorough, well-researched, with obvious extreme care given to this long-standing career. I love show-business biographies on those behind the scenes, but this was surprisingly meticulous (in a good way). My personal era of SNL was 1995-2010, it isn't really for me these days, so it wasn't really on my radar that SNL was so subversive upon premiere. The Saturday Night film was so fun and refreshing, and this book offering minute details of the larger picture was riveting to dive into. Great companion pieces of media to release so closely together.

This is the exhaustive and exhausting book of everything Lorne Michaels. If you’ve watched any of the shows, especially the opening skits, you must read this book and I’ll bet you even have some favorites.

4.5/5 stars Thank you to NetGalley, Random House, and Random House Publishing Group for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

This book is a true feat and masterclass in biographies. As someone who loves memoirs and biographies I’m truly impressed with Morrison’s ability to summarize the inception and history of the institution that is SNL, Michaels’ 50+ year career, and his personal life all in one book.

The writing is densely packed with insights, anecdotes, and humor. I’m extremely impressed with the amount of people involved in this project. There seems to be no detail spared around the creation of the show, and the early years of his illustrious career. This book is very well-research and clearly took years and an ineffable amount of hours information-seeking, interviewing, etc. to complete.

I also really enjoyed the way Morrison portrayed Lorne. It felt bipartisan and allowed the reader to take in the information as they pleased. Everyone has off days, less than pleasant moments, etc. and it was refreshing to feel as if she laid all that out on the table and allowed the reader to decide how they feel about him as a partner, boss, coworker, friend, etc.

It’s also no surprise Morrison is an editor, this book is so elevated which also really helped to capture the essence of Lorne. The vocabulary in this book is also exquisite and had me looking up new words left and right which I really enjoyed.

The structure and pacing of the book overall was interesting. I really enjoyed the splicing the chapters with a deeper look into the more modern day SNL but admittedly the Jonah episode felt dated at this point. I’m not sure when the manuscript was turned it, if this had to do with the cast/Lorne’s availability, etc. The pacing felt a bit choppy in-between those chapters as the beginning years are so heavily focused and written about and the last 20 years or so are almost glossed over. I understand the reasoning for this since it’s only a small section of his overall jam-packed career but as a fan in my 20s I personally would have loved to hear more about the cast and the show from the last 20+ years since it’s the most timely and relevant (especially to me).

Overall as an avid SNL fan this is a must read! The last chapter “Saturday” especially is a great behind-the-curtain look into the overall culture and reality of live production and show business.

Definitely would recommend!

You have to respect Lorne Michaels for having a successful comedy for so long but the quality of the show has declined quite a bit since its inception. Michaels had a knack for cherry picking comedians and writers from improv groups like Second City, but unfortunately quite a few them like John Belushi were self destructive. The book covers Michaels career prior to SNL when he was a writer for other comedy shows. Michaels strength was being a father figure to many young comedians, but the best of the show was when Belushi and Richard Pryor did Samurai Hotel Clerk and Drew Carey did the motivational speaker that warned kids they would be living in a van down by the river. He created an audience for this talent, but I rarely watch the show anymore. You can just watch YouTube videos of whatever skits you like so the whole TV weekly series is past its prime.

I don’t read them often, but I do like old behind-the-scenes showbiz stories. When an early review copy of this became available, I thought it might be a breezy, superficial cash-in of a book marketed to coincide with SNL’s 50th anniversary year. Since I’m not above a quick perusal of a breezy, superficial cash-in of a book, I figured it might be worth a look.

So I was very pleasantly surprised to find that this is a substantial, deeply-researched, fully-fleshed-out, definitive biography of one of television’s most influential producers and comedy pacesetters, which I only later found out has been nearly a decade in the making.

Few TV producers are famous in their own right, and most who are currently known by name (like, say, Chuck Lorre or Shonda Rhimes) are known for a prolific body of work. You have to go back to the likes of Rod Serling or Gene Roddenberry to find TV producers who are essentially known for one career-defining thing. Lorne Michaels, you could say, is as current as Lorre and Rhimes in his output and influence, and as old-school as Serling and Roddenberry in his connection to one definitive project.

And that bridge between the old and the new, between Michaels’ reverence for what has come before and his push to help define what comes next, is a major theme of the book. As mainstream as SNL is today, it’s easy to forget how subversive it was when it debuted. And yet even then, it had its roots in classic comedy, Morrison observes, as Michaels “was hoping to be able to recreate the Colgate Comedy Hour and the Sid Caesar Show” for a younger, modern audience.

Long before SNL, though, a large part of the book is devoted to Michaels’ upbringing and his influences. We learn how the young Lorne Lipowitz grew up enchanted by comedy and entertainment, absorbing the lore of old showbiz from his neighbor/later first wife’s comedian father. Putting on SNL-like weekly shows at summer camp eventually led to putting on an SNL-like show on Canadian TV, which eventually led to… not SNL, but a career dead-end in Hollywood.

SNL would come, but not just yet. Michaels once again found himself straddling the old and the new, the hip and the hoary, embracing the counterculture of the 1960’s and 70’s while making a living writing for a lot of schlocky old-fashioned variety shows of the era. As one who was “as much an old showbiz buff as he was a young man in a hurry,” he found himself “caught between feeling like he was going places and panicking that he had dead-ended.”

It was a combination of talent and serendipity that led to Saturday Night Live. This is the part of Michaels’ story that most readers have probably come for, while simultaneously being the part that’s most often told. But Morrison tells it with engaging writing and compelling detail. It was actually NBC executives who thought up much of the show’s structure - that it should be called Saturday Night, that it would be live, broadcast from NBC headquarters in Rockefeller Center, and have guest hosts. It all meshed with the ideas that Michaels himself had, for a youth-oriented comedy sketch show with live rock music, featuring a repertory company that often satirized television itself, with fake commercials, game shows, newscasts and the like.

The early years of the show are well-covered by other books, but Morrison differentiates her take by keeping the focus on Michaels, his theories and analysis of comedy, and how to generate a show from scratch every week, as she deconstructs early sketches and their influences instead of merely summarizing them. Complaints that the show wasn’t as good as it used to be started only a few years in, as “success made it seem mainstream” and Michaels found that “maintaining a hit was almost harder than creating one.”

Tensions with less creative-minded executives are a recurring theme, particularly during Michaels’ “wilderness years,” when he left the show after its fifth season and was lured back for its eleventh; during the rocky 1984-85 and 1994-95 seasons when the show was at risk of being cancelled; and in 1998, when humorless execs got Norm Macdonald and longtime writer Jim Downey fired. By this time, Michaels comes across as somewhat more detached, making decisions that weren’t always best for the show, inviting more executive interference. While every story seems to end with Michaels coming out ahead and outsmarting the suits, Morrison does manage to show that the one-time wunderkind is far from infallible in his approach to comedy and his management style.

With no real rocky periods to speak of in the show’s second quarter-century, this portion of the book is somewhat less interesting, as everything seems to coast along and the stories about how the show handled challenges like 9/11, recent presidential elections and Covid are much more familiar. At this point, the book is less about Michaels’ rise and the creative process, and more about the show itself, as the one-time counterculture darling developed into an old showbiz-style institution itself. I'm not sure it would have been realistic to do so, but I don't think the book would have lost anything had all of the past 25 years or so been truncated into a shorter summary rather than stretched into full chapters.

Over time, Michaels himself became a mogul, rich and well-connected beyond his wildest dreams. And yet some of his dreams, from becoming a successful filmmaker to becoming, improbably, editor of the New Yorker, never came to pass, as most of his successes are directly linked to SNL - overseeing the rest of NBC late night, with his hoped-for movie career largely limited to producing SNL spinoffs.

The book’s structure is unusual, in that it’s divided into “parts” named for days of the week, each one starting with a chapter describing a day in the production process leading up to a 2018 episode of SNL (it’s unclear why Morrison didn’t manage to get insider access to a more recent production week - 2018 was a long time ago, after all). Then, after each of these opening chapters, the book reverts to its original timeline right where it left off in the previous part. So it can be a little jarring, lurching back and forth in time - but it all comes together in the end, where the final chapter describes show day and you really get to see Michaels in action, making decisions large and small, being incredibly hands-on in some cases, surprisingly hands-off in others, and choreographing the entire process of turning what appears to be endless chaos into live television.

“He is the real star of the show,” Morrison writes of Michaels early in the book. By the book’s end, that’s hard to dispute. After 50 years, the show may not always be funny, but it’s undoubtedly still influential, as a marriage of the old and the new, the hip and the hokey, the subversive and the institutional, the likes of which we’re unlikely ever to see again.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC for review.

I'm a long-time SNL fan who has read the definitive book on the series (Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests) as well as any shows, podcasts, and online stories about the show. This is a wonderful companion and a must-read for any SNL fan.

The structure was really interesting - each section begins with one day in the week of production for a specific episode. Unfortunately, this one feels a bit dated already, as it follows a Jonah Hill episode in 2018. Still, it was interesting to see the behind-the-scenes work that goes into creating one night of television. The remaining part of each chapter follows Lorne's life from a child, through this rise in TV production, with a long section on the first few seasons, and then not as much detail on the other 40 years (I would have liked more insight here).

The 11+ hour read time was daunting to me, a speed reader who usually considers six hours a long read time. A casual fan may be reluctant to invest that much time. Despite the read time, the long amount of names that I would mix up, and the sheer amount of details, this was still an enjoyable, highly readable biography of the man behind an entertainment classic.

Random House provided an early galley for review.

This year marks the 50th anniversary for Saturday Night Live, so there is no better time for this biography to drop. As a fan of the show for much of my life, I was very excited to check this one out.

Morrison structures this memoir in an interesting way. With six sections, each starts with a day-in-the-life as the reader is walked through a weekly breakdown of how an SNL episode is created (which I found very enlightening). Then, within those sections, we get to see Lorne's life unfold from his youth in Canada to his start in television all the way up today.

As an entertainment sponge, I learned a lot from this one. His connections to earlier programs and specials were fascinating. It helped to show the evolution of his approach to programming. Of course, I enjoyed the section covering the creation of and first five years of SNL (a most infamous era). I had not realized that he had zero involvement for seasons 6 to 10, or that, when he returned for the 11th, that season's cast was all a one-and-done. The sections that focused on his work with The Kids in the Hall as well as the other late-night shows were also enlightening.

All in all, this was a solid look at the man who had major influence on American television for five decades.

Everyone has an SNL phase, I still revisit mine from time to time. And I'm still half convinced it would be the dream job, and could also still happen for me (ha!). This was a fascinating look at that man behind it, who has always been a bit of a mystery to lay people such as myself.

I loved this book. It was so interesting and gave me great insight on snl, a favorite of mine. I loved the mix of old stories and present day.

Lorne Michaels is a god in my house. Both my roommate and I grew up watching the show and still pepper our conversations with SNL references. We've been lucky to see the show live twice, and I had the honor of meeting Lorne many years ago, through my job in post-production.

Susan Morrison has written the book that so many who have failed at writing. Covering Lorne's childhood to now, everything in between is the good stuff. We learn about strengths and weaknesses. We learn about the popcorn. We learn everything we wanted to know while still keeping Lorne a bit of a mystery.

As the 50th anniversary of SNL is coming in the next few weeks, this was a perfect way to kick off my own celebration.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

A-MAZING!
Has anyone had a greater influence on American comedy than Lorne Michaels? For fifty years, he has been the driving force behind Saturday Night Live, shaping the landscape of sketch comedy and launching the careers of countless comedians. As SNL marks its 50th anniversary, Susan Morrison’s new biography offers an unprecedented look at the man behind the show—his vision, his creative process, and his relentless pursuit of excellence.

While past books about SNL have painted Michaels as an enigma, Morrison brings him into sharp focus. She traces his journey from a small town in Canada to the pinnacle of American television, exploring the dreams that fueled him and the battles he fought to to attain them. Particularly fascinating is his philosophy of infusing every sketch with a "taste of sunshine"—his belief in optimism, comedic timing, and the idea that the writers are the true stars.

Morrison digs deep into Michaels’ influence, not just as a showrunner but as a mentor who has shaped generations of comedic talent. From his early days in television to the pressure-cooker environment of weekly live comedy, she examines how his experiences informed his leadership style and his uncanny ability to identify and nurture comedic brilliance.

For this book, Morrison was granted unprecedented access, even sitting in with Michaels for a full week of show prep (during a Jonah Hill-hosted episode). Alongside SNL legends like Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, John Mulaney, Chris Rock, Dan Aykroyd, Amy Poehler, Jimmy Fallon, and more, she captures the energy, chaos, and magic that have made SNL an institution.

For SNL fans, comedy lovers, and anyone fascinated by the mechanics of cultural influence, this biography is an essential read. Lorne Michaels didn’t just shape Saturday Night Live—he shaped comedy itself.

#RandomHouse #SNL #LorneMichaels #SusanMorrison

I really enjoyed getting to learn more about SNL and Lorne. There were a lot of interesting stories about his early career and beginnings at SNL that I didn't know. My only critique would be there is a lot of names thrown around that it is very hard to keep up with and I would have liked to know more about his personal life as an adult.

This biography of legendary Saturday Night Live creator and producer Lorne Michaels is literally all you would ever want it, or any other celebrity biography, to be.

Having read Tom Shales and Andrew Miller’s fabulously reported SNL oral history “Live From New York” several times, and having listened to every “WTF with Marc Maron” episode ever to feature a current or former SNL cast member while Marc asks them for all of their Lorne stories, and having watched what feels like every clip in existence of current and former cast members doing Lorne impressions, I wasn’t sure what more there was to learn about this enigmatic man.

But author Susan Morrison has clearly put in the work. Years of it. And she seems to have gotten unprecedented access to both Lorne and those who have been part of the last 50+ years of his life.

The story of Lorne’s life is split into six chronological segments and each segment is interwoven with the story of one day of the week during the production of a 2018 episode of SNL. So you get to go deep into Lorne’s history and psyche but also learn some behind-the-scenes tidbits about how the show works.

This book is a must read for any SNL fan, especially right now as the show celebrates its 50th anniversary and the country waits with bated breath to see if he’ll retire now that the show is 50 and he is 80!