Weekend update: ‘SNL’ in 31st season
Saturday Night Live returns this weekend, kicking off its 31st season on NBC (11:30 p.m. ET/PT). But the show will be back minus one of its key players: Tina Fey, writer and Weekend Update co-anchor.
Fey, 35, gave birth to baby Alice on Sept. 10. Fey’s husband, Jeff Richmond, is a composer for SNL.
Creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels says Fey’s absence is open-ended. “She knows that she should come back when she feels up to it. I don’t have any idea when that will be.”
It could be weeks and weeks, or “it could be months and months,” he says. “I just hope it’s not years and years.”
So who will do the Weekend Update news sketch, which last season ó after Jimmy Fallon left ó was co-anchored by Fey and Amy Poehler?
“Amy and someone,” Michaels says. “I don’t know who.”
He’s also not sure about another key player: Maya Rudolph, 33, who is seven months pregnant. Lorne says he met with the comedian last week in Los Angeles, and she is awaiting her doctor’s approval to travel to New York for the Saturday Night Live premiere.
“All I want is the audience to sort of get a glimpse of her so that everybody understands why when she disappears,” he says. “She’s such an essential part of the show that I can’t imagine her not being there and Tina not being there. I’m just in denial about all of it.”
After 30 years, Michaels doesn’t seem too worried. But that blas√à-sounding attitude doesn’t mean he’s bored. “I sort of feel, with having completed the 30th season, that it’s a new beginning.
“I’m just setting out to do shows with people I think are really funny and we can sort of be √≥ ‘reinvention’ is too strong a word. I think we’re at the end of one cycle, and now there’s a lot of new energy at the show. I’m hoping it’ll spill onto the air.”
Two new “featured players” are in the cast this season:
√Ø Bill Hader, originally from Tulsa, was a member of the Second City Los Angeles comedy troupe and most recently was a “field agent” on MTV’s Punk’d.
√Ø Andy Samberg, a native of Berkeley, Calif., was one of three writer/performer/filmmakers dubbed “The Lonely Island,” whose films were showcased on Channel101.com.
Michaels says he expects the two to “make their mark quickly.”
The season premiere will be hosted by Daily Show alum Steve Carell, star of the feature film The 40-Year-Old Virgin and NBC’s comedy The Office (Tuesday, 9:30 p.m. ET/PT). Carell co-starred with Will Ferrell in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Jim Carrey in Bruce Almighty.
Musical guest for the season premiere will be hip-hop artist Kanye West, who made headlines during a Hurricane Katrina benefit performance on nationwide TV when he accused President Bush of not caring about the plight of black people.
Michaels says that Robert Smigel has a new cartoon and that there will be the usual political satire, but he’s not sure exactly what the topic will be. “God knows there has been a lot we could have done in the last six weeks. That tends to get written in the last two days.”
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