Legendary comedy writer Robert Smigel knew he had to apologize to SNL creator Lorne Michaels just one month after he left the show.
“It’s a complicated thing to work for anybody,” Smigel, 66, said on Obsessed: The Podcast. “And I discovered that at The Dana Carvey Show, because I had people that—we had a really good relationship, but once I became the boss and the decider, it gets stressful.”
After a full decade writing some of SNL‘s most iconic sketches, including “Bill Swerski’s Superfans” (AKA “Da Bears”) and the TV Funhouse cartoons, Smigel departed the show to helm a new sketch show with fellow alum Dana Carvey. It was only after leaving SNL that Smigel gained a true appreciation of how difficult Michaels’s job was.
“I literally called Lorne Michaels and said to him, ‘I get it now, and I’m sorry,’” Smigel recalled, laughing about the phone call he made just four weeks into the new show. “I had to do it. I had to express that to him. And he just laughed. Because he got it.”
Not only had Smigel left SNL, but he had locked down two young comedians who could’ve been its greatest cast members.
“Steve Carell was the easiest hire I think I ever made,” he declared. In the same year that Smigel hired the young comic, Carell skipped out on his SNL audition in favor of filming a local commercial in Chicago.
“Everyone was jealous of Steve: ‘You got a Brown’s Chicken ad? Oh my god!’” Smigel recalled. “These guys, they’re young, they’re all struggling, so he had to take it. And naturally, Lorne Michaels isn’t going to come back tomorrow. He’s got his schedule. He’s a busy guy. So we got the understudy.”
That understudy turned out to be Stephen Colbert, whom Michaels didn’t hire either, most likely because he felt his paternal archetype was already filled by SNL star Phil Hartman.
“He and Steve Carell were both outstanding on The Dana Carvey Show‚" Smigel said of the short-lived sketch series. “And the rest is history,” he added, sarcastically. “I’m a billionaire, and I just do Triumph [the Insult Comic Dog] for fun, not money.”
Despite having one of the most star-studded writing teams of all time—including Carell, Colbert, Louis C.K., Oscar-winning screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, and The Office creator Greg Daniels—The Dana Carvey Show infamously flamed out within weeks. The show was canceled by ABC after just seven episodes, largely due to its controversial sketches, including the series opener in which Bill Clinton literally breastfed a litter of puppies.
Carell and Colbert eventually did make their way to SNL, voicing roles in Smigel’s cartoon series, The Ambiguously Gay Duo, which he said was made to “entirely mock homophobia.”
“I was like, ‘Hey, so glad you’re here. Here’s the part,’” Smigel recalled. “The Ambiguously Gay Duo was a cartoon that I thought of not for Saturday Night Live, but when I was at The Dana Carvey Show."
“And then the show got canceled, and I thought, ‘Well, what did I enjoy the most?’ And I think it was that cartoon,” he continued.
“I called Lorne Michaels at the end of the summer, and I said, ‘I thought of a way I could come back to the show,’” Smigel recalled. “And he’s like, ‘Let’s do it.’ It was the easiest pitch I’ve ever had in my career.” He ended up spending another 12 years making animated shorts for SNL.
Smigel’s podcast, Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends, airs on iHeartRadio, with new episodes released on Fridays.
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