Lorne Michaels biographer Susan Morrison is recalling the ways in which the Saturday Night Live boss tried to help Chris Farley kick his drug addiction before the beloved comedian died of a cocaine and heroine overdose in 1997.
During a recent episode of Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast, the Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live author explained that Michaels changed his laissez-faire approach to the cast’s drinking and drug usage after original cast member John Belushi died of a drug overdose in 1982.
“When Belushi died, it really hit him hard,” Morrison said. “And I think he felt like this whole approach of just letting people do their own thing on their own time, this was the wrong approach. We’re a tribe, we’re a group, and we have to look out for each other.”
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Chris Farley as Beverly Gelfand, Adam Sandler as Hank Gelfand during a sketch on ‘SNL’
He adopted a much more hands-on approach when Farley joined the cast of SNL almost a decade later in 1990. “From the beginning, [Farley] clearly had addiction issues,” she remarked. “Lorne would call him into his office and give him these talks about the drinking or the drugs.”
Morrison recalled a conversation with Bob Odenkirk, who served as a writer on the show from 1987 until 1991, in which the Better Call Saul star said that Farley would often be excited to get called into Michael’s office for another scolding.
“It was like the kind of thrill of being in the principal’s office, but at the same time, you’re getting in trouble,” she said. “He couldn’t metabolize it, but Lorne had really changed his approach. He would ban Farley from the show for weeks at a time if he was too f—ed up. And he sent him to a series of really tough love rehab places. And obviously, it didn’t do it for him.”
In her biography Lorne, Morrison wrote that Farley struggled with heroin throughout his five-season run on SNL from 1990 until 1995. “After getting clean once and relapsing, he’d been suspended by Michaels, who sent him to a tough-love rehab facility in Alabama,” she wrote. “Michaels knew that the show was what Farley liked best, so taking it away from him, he hoped, would make an impression.”
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Farley later returned to host SNL in October 1997, just two months before his death. In the book, Morrison explained that some individuals criticized Michaels for letting the comedian — who was seen in the cold open gasping for air and sweating heavily — perform in such a state.
However, she noted that the show served as an attempt to help get Farley back on track.
“Farley’s manager, Marc Gurvitz, had asked for the hosting gig as a favor: he thought that, for Farley, being back at 8H might have a stabilizing effect,” Morrison wrote. “Michaels agreed. The discipline and rigor of SNL, he always believed, helped keep people straight. ‘It’s a small point of pride that nobody has ever died doing the show,’ Michaels told Marc Maron on his podcast. ‘It generally happens a couple of years after they leave.’”
While speaking on the Armchair Expert podcast, Morrison added that she believed Michaels has also been “pretty hands-on in guiding Pete Davidson through his different issues” and looking after John Mulaney throughout his own sobriety journey.
“They all talk about how Lorne is a really helpful person to talk to about it. So I think that he definitely realized, ‘Okay, I can play a role here,’” she said. “But also, I never saw any drugs in the time that I spent over there in the last number of years.”
Listen to Morrison talk about Michaels, Farley, and Saturday Night Live in the podcast above.
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