The Biggest Loser of the Travis Kelce/Taylor Swift Engagement Is Lorne Michaels and ‘SNL’

NFL superstar Travis Kelce and international pop music icon Taylor Swift are getting married, and if they have a summer wedding, it might just kill Lorne Michaels.

Earlier today, arguably the biggest entertainment news of the year broke along with the internet when Swift and Kelce posted a joint Instagram album filled with flowery, impeccably framed engagement photos with the caption, “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.” The celebrity super-power-couple’s engagement, along with the massive rock now hanging from Swift’s left ring finger, will, no doubt, loom large over the upcoming NFL season as Fox, CBS and NBC fine-tune their high-definition cameras to perfectly capture Swift’s smiling, cheering face with the ring glistening on her pumped fist.

Unfortunately for a certain other cultural institution, not everyone in entertainment will get a bite at the TayTrav engagement apple, and by the time Saturday Night Live returns in October, it will be too late for the show to devote an entire cold open or “Weekend Update” segment to celebrating and satirizing the big news from the friends of the show.

Now if Swift and Kelce agreed to co-host the SNL Season 51 premiere, they could probably get Lorne Michaels to name their first child as his successor.  

While Kelce and Swift were both conspicuously absent from SNL Season 50, Michaels and his team have been courting the A-list couple for years, famously inviting the pair to cameo in an episode in October 2023, shortly after they went public with their relationship. During Michaels' recent interview with Puck founder Matthew Belloni, Michaels revealed that he even used the opportunity of Swift’s surprise appearance to attempt to book her for this past February's SNL50 special, but to no avail.

“She and Travis came to Pete Davidson’s show, the first show of the season before, and I talked to her about it then,” Michaels recalled of the couple’s cameo that proved to be one of the most popular episodes of SNL Season 49, as well as his pitch for her appearance at SNL50. “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.’”

Both Swift and Kelce were absent from SNL50, despite the invitation, but, when SNL returns in October, there’s no doubt that Michaels will re-double his efforts to get the two former hosts to return, even for a single frame. Between the engagement and Davidson’s recent pregnancy announcement, Michaels might just have to re-think the entire SNL offseason for the sake of celebrity gossip — imagine the mental breakdowns that the SNL cast and crew will have once there’s 52 shows per year.