On the Talk Easy podcast, Jason Sudeikis was asked who would take over Saturday Night Live whenever Lorne Michaels steps away. His first answer was a joke: “who Charlie Bucket is.” He said the handoff “needs to be different than what Willy Wonka says,” since whoever gets it would be an adult who’d want to do things their own way.
Then the host raised the name everyone keeps floating, Tina Fey. Sudeikis got quiet.
“It makes me feel good,” he said, adding that being “almost near tears thinking about that” is “usually a good sign.” He called the idea “beautiful.”
He wouldn’t say the job was hers, though. The feeling alone, he noted, is “not enough of a reason for Tina to do it or for Lorne to let Tina do it,” and he landed on one condition: “I would only be down with it if Lorne is.”
Michaels cocreated SNL in 1975 and has run it as executive producer since 1985, which is why the succession question lands the way it does. Fey came up under him too, joining the writing staff in 1997 and becoming the show’s first female head writer.
Handing her the keys would do more than fill a chair. It would keep the show in the hands of someone Michaels built.