Saturday Night Live boss Lorne Michaels famously runs a tight ship. He doesn’t like it when the cast cracks up during sketches and he expects the show’s musical acts to stick to the script and play the songs they’ve rehearsed for that week’s show.
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So, when Sinead O’Connor veered way off during her moving a cappella October 3, 1992 performance of Bob Marley’s “War” on SNL — which she ended by ripping up a picture of then Pope John Paul II and saying “Fight the real enemy” — the singer was reportedly blanket-banned from the NBC network and would never again appear on SNL; O’Connor died of natural causes in July 2023 at age 56.
In a rare interview, Michaels was asked by Puck if he had to think twice about bringing attention to one of the show’s most controversial moments by having Miley Cyrus and Brittany Howard cover O’Connor’s most famous hit: her take on the Prince-penned “Nothing Compares 2 U.” The pair took on the ballad in February during the SNL50: The Anniversary Special celebration and Michaels said it was a no-brainer.
“No,” he said when asked about whether he had any worries about revisiting that controversial moment. “If [O’Connor] were still alive, I would have asked her to sing that song. But it was represented by Miley singing it with so much power.”
The famously stoic Michaels said he “teared up a couple times” during the emotional half-century celebrations earlier this year, saying he wasn’t weeping, per se, but that “a lot of other people were,” especially when Paul McCartney closed the show with the Beatles’ “Carry That Weight.”
Flashing back to the show opener with Paul Simon and Sabrina Carpenter dueting on “Homeward Bound,” Michaels said that even after 50 years of SNL, he was nervous about whether the first gen-now gen collaboration would work. “Earlier anniversary shows, we just did the one show, but I thought a year ago that we could do that [concert the Friday night before at Radio City Music Hall],” he said. “I spoke to Paul Simon about it, and then he got a call from Sabrina Carpenter, who wanted him to do a song with her on her special. And he said, ‘I don’t think I want to do that. Would you take that to Radio City?’ So [the opening] started back then, it was in my head. And then it migrated.”
He knew for sure, however, that he wanted to close with McCartney. “For lots of reasons. The emotion,” Michaels said. “Once he was there, I toyed with him opening, but there was something to closing with ‘Golden Slumbers’ that felt powerful to me. And Paul [Simon] and Sabrina were gonna do ‘Homeward Bound,’ which worked perfectly. It resonated with the audience that was there because for a lot of them, [SNL] was a home for five to 10 years. [The pairing] let the audience know what the show is. It’s now and it’s then.”
As for whether he was holding out for Taylor Swift — who has been on the show six times, including a cameo on the 40th anniversary special — to participate if she’d wanted to, Michaels said that was never in the cards. “She and Travis [Kelce] came to Pete Davidson’s show, the first show of the season before, and I talked to her about it then,” he said. “But I knew that her [Eras] tour was mammoth. And I thought, ‘If she can come, she’ll come, and if she can’t, she can’t.’”
SNL will return to the air for its 51st season on Oct. 4.