Carol Burnett speculated about why she’s never been invited to host Saturday Night Live on Monday, despite being one of the last living comedy legends of her era—and she thinks it’s got something to do with show boss Lorne Michaels.
“I don’t know what I did to upset that man,” Burnett, 92, told The New Yorker in a new profile. “Do you think it’s misogynistic?” she asked her interviewer.
The profile notes that Burnett is a beacon for the show’s alumni, who’ve often thanked her for her trailblazing career and credited her success with their own. For instance, Amy Poehler declared that she “owes everything to” Burnett when the SNL alum presented her with a lifetime achievement award from Variety’s Power of Women event last year.
But throughout the show’s 50-year history, Burnett said has never received an invite to host, despite the fact that The Carol Burnett Show had already blazed a trail for sketch comedy on American television when SNL premiered in 1975. Burnett only graced the stage once, during a brief appearance on “good nights” segment in 1985, after host Harry Anderson shouted her out.
Burnett still questions why she was never asked, and she’s not alone in considering sexism on Michaels’ part. Julia Louis-Dreyfus said as much in 2016, when she told the New York Times, “It was a very sexist environment,” when she worked on the show. She added that since returning to host, “it’s much more of an equal-opportunity environment.”
The show’s first female “Weekend Update” host Jane Curtin told The Hollywood Reporter in 2019 that she found the “sexist” environment on the show “stunning,” and said the show had not “evolved” with the times when she worked there between 1975 and 1980.
Michaels most recently defended the show’s record on “diversity” when fans decried that the show’s cast rarely included a Black woman. “We’ve been breaking those barriers from the very beginning,” Michaels told NPR in 2015. “It didn’t come from any place of intent or meanness, it came from looking every year for the best people we can find.”
That said, on the subject of Burnett specifically, there seems to be something more there than accidental overlook, as reports say the show boss has repeatedly used the phrase “too Carol Burnett” to criticize what he didn’t want on in SNL. Her named became “shorthand” for everything the show was trying to avoid, according to original writers like Al Franken and Buck Henry.
Burnett, for her part, though still wonders what she “did” to cause the perceived rift between her and Michaels, and said that she “would not be interested” in hosting the show, even if asked. “No, I don’t think I would. Maybe like 20 years ago or whatever,” she told Vulture in 2019, “But that ship has sailed.”
If Burnett did somehow get the chance to host SNL, she’d set a new record for oldest host after Betty White took the reins at 88 in 2010.
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