Carol Burnett Questions Whether Her ‘SNL’ Snubs Are A Product of Lorne Michaels’ ‘Misogyny’
The only thing standing between Carol Burnett and a Saturday Night Live hosting slot might have been some good, old-fashioned sexism.
In a new interview with The New Yorker, the 92-year-old comedy legend looked back on her long television career, and speculated that gender bias could have fueled her repeated snubs from SNL.
“I don’t know what I did to upset that man, but I’m so sorry,” Burnett said of Lorne Michaels. The actress then turned the question back onto reporter Rachel Syme: “Do you think it’s misogynistic?”
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Michaels (and Syme, for that matter) declined to answer the comedienne’s specific ask. Considering that the long-running series famously denounced sketch ideas as “too Carol Burnett” in SNL’s early years, it seems fairly clear why the actress has never been invited to host the show.
“‘Carol Burnett’ was Broadway. We were rock and roll,” Michaels told the New Yorker in a profile back in January, insisting that the qualifier “was a stylistic observation, not a sexist one.”
“Their sketches were about alcoholism, divorce, life in the suburbs — middle-aged stuff,” he continued. “I wanted us writing about our stuff.”
On the off-chance Michaels were to awaken tomorrow with a Dickensian change of heart, ready to cast Burnett as a guest host after presumably being visited by the spirits of SNL’s past, present and future, the actress would still be hard-pressed to visit Studio 8H.
“I would not be interested,” Burnett told Fox News of a potential SNL hosting gig back in 2023. “That’s all I can say.”
