Norm Macdonald is widely considered to be the greatest “Weekend Update” anchor of all time. But according to former Saturday Night Live writer Jim Downey, Macdonald almost lost that job to Bill Maher.
Downey, who started writing at SNL in the very first season in 1975 and became head writer in the mid-’80s, joined his old friend and SNL colleague Al Franken’s podcast over the weekend to tell their shared history of the iconic sketch show.
And while he was there, Downey surprised Franken by revealing more details than had previously been known about the search to replace Kevin Nealon at the “Update” desk in 1994.
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Franken began by explaining that after years of working mostly behind the scenes at SNL, he too auditioned to anchor “Weekend Update” at that time. But according to Downey, Maher “had the backing” of super agent Bernie Brillstein, who represented Lorne Michaels and several cast members on the show.
“Oh, I didn’t know that,” Franken said, joking, “I thought I should do it.”
“Norm emerged late,” Downey added, saying that until then, it was between Franken and Maher. “But once it wasn’t going to be you, then I was like, can it please be Norm Macdonald and not Bill Maher?”
Ultimately, Michaels and the SNL team took his advice, only to fire both Downey and Macdonald for going too hard on NBC executive Don Ohlmeyer’s friend O.J. Simpson three years later.
Downey insisted to Franken that his feelings on the matter had more to do with Macdonald’s brilliance than anything he had against Maher. But notably, Macdonald was not shy about his disdain for Maher, who at that point was already hosting an early version of his Politically Incorrect show on Comedy Central.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter a few years before he died of cancer, Macdonald said of Maher, “I find him completely unfunny. Like, maybe the unfunniest person I’ve ever encountered that’s called a comedian.”
