Lorne Michaels Said ‘SNL’ Is ‘Nonpartisan’ and ‘You Can’t Be Samantha Bee.’ She Now Claps Back: He’s ‘Built a Career Out of Elevating the Loudest Guy in the Room’

https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/samantha-bee-tells-off-lorne-michaels-snl-political-diss-1236306968/

17 comments

  1. >“It’s the hardest thing for me to explain to this generation that the show is nonpartisan,” Michaels says in the book (via The Daily Beast) in response to the outrage over Trump’s hosting gig. “We have our biases, we have our people we like better than others, but you can’t be Samantha Bee.”

    >Morrison adds in the biography that Michaels “meant one-sided and strident” when he cited Bee’s name, to which the real Bee now responded to by saying she is proud to have those qualities.

    >“I mean, literally—imagine calling anyone strident when you have built a career out of elevating the loudest guy in the room,” Bee fired back.

    >“I get referenced in the book as being someone that [Michaels] does not want to emulate in any way,” Bee added. “I concede the point. He’s right. I am one-sided. And I am strident, and proudly so.”

  2. Most importantly, I think he meant you have to be funny, which she isn’t.

  3. I don’t get why this is a big deal. He didn’t say she sucks, he said her material leans heavily left, which she gladly conceded. So he said an accurate statement?

  4. Lorne is a real piece of shit that has platformed the absolute worst of us.

    Fuck him.

  6. Just two hugely successful Canadian comedians disagreeing with each other! Love Sam Bee

  7. the media using “clap back” is the cringiest shit ever

  8. SNL for the longest time has just been a bunch of grown-ass theatre kids dressed in Party City outfits, half-assing lines while glaring at cue cards. Weekend Update is marginally funny but is literally just the product of writers paraphrasing Twitter zingers they’ve read throughout the week.

    The show would be so much better if Lorne Michaels were replaced and they just do something *different*. I’m in my thirties and outside a brief window where the Lonely Island shorts were popular, the show was never relevant. It feels so weird and almost dissonant how a lot of journalists and randos online treat the show like it’s some prestigious staple of comedy when so much of it’s unwatchable.

  10. There is different from a left leaning comedian and fucking fascist. I mean the man love Nazis and white supremacy. Maybe Lorne is into it but needs to give the ole party line of being nonpartisan?

  11. Nonpartisan???? SNL is heavily partisan. That’s why their ratings suck now. I do agree though Bee can’t get a job unless the show is called Republicans suck.

  12. Why are people hating on SNL? I think this season has been decently funny. The episode that Dave Chappelle hosted was good even. Idk where this hate is coming from

  13. SNL is definitely political, not sure what Michaels is on about. But it is funniest when it pulls no punches to either side.

  14. Now that Lorne is rich as hell his priorities are different

  16. Nonpartisan is such a stupid goal. Like we need good satire actually ridiculing the systems of power.

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