‘I lived in mortal terror’: More 'SNL' employees slam toxic work culture as iconic show reels from slew of allegations
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: Author and reporter Maureen Ryan has attempted to expose the alleged toxic work environment at NBC’s award-winning late-night comedy show, ‘Saturday Night Live,’ in her book ‘Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, And A Call For Change In Hollywood.’ In the book, Ryan claimed that ‘SNL’ has a culture where “abuse and toxicity are not just permitted but often celebrated.”
Ryan’s claims were also backed by multiple employees who previously worked for the show. A former male writer alleged that he got “bad anxiety” while working for ‘SNL’ while another former employee claimed he lived in constant fear during their time at the show. Former male employees have spoken up about the popular comedy show too after anonymous former female 'SNL' staffers told Business Insider about the “routinely uncomfortable, incredibly sexist, and at times unsafe” work environment under the aegis of Lorne Michaels. Their statements show that even the "straight, white" male staffers had their share of woes.
‘Nobody told you how to do the job’
As part of his book, Ryan interviewed a former SNL writer from the 90's who claimed he had to get therapy after having “bad anxiety” from his time at the show. The writer, who goes by ‘Grant,’ compared his joining to being thrown into the lion's den. “Nobody told you how to do the job. You either figured out how to do the job, or you washed out,” he shared.
“And because of that, the environment could be incredibly unwelcoming, even for a straight white dude. Even for me, it was an incredibly unwelcoming and unkind place to work,” Grant alleged. He also claimed that his coworkers at ‘SNL’ were working against him due to creator Lorne Michaels’ stronghold on them. “It's completely and utterly Darwinian. It has no institutional interest in helping the people who work there be better at the job,” the writer claimed.
“You just get thrown into this pit and you kind of have to fight your way out,” he continued. “I was living in a sort of Mad Max: Fury Road-style sink-or-swim environment that was utterly unconcerned with my wellbeing and my happiness and my sense of safety and just general holistic health,” Grant explained. The writer also stated that SNL leadership has gone “too long” free of criticism or punishment. “Any institution that's been around as long as it has and has the power that it has — and has had intermittently, but somewhat consistently — for 50 years deserves scrutiny. There’s no question,” he added.
‘I wasn’t the only one living in fear’
Prior to the launch of Ryan's explosive book, former 'SNL' employee Steven Thrasher opened up about his experience of working in the show in a 2015 article titled 'Working on Saturday Night Live taught me about the ruthlessness of TV.' "Whether saving Brad Pitt from marauding women, watching performers lose it if their sketches got cut or seeing technicians try not to crack up on TV, there was never a dull moment working on SNL – but I lived in fear," he wrote in The Guardian.
Thrasher worked during the 24th and 25th seasons of the show when he was 25. He was one of the first staff members who was born after the show started broadcasting on NBC from 30 Rockefeller Center. On show night, his job was to take script changes from the writers and to write them into the scripts of the audio and music crew by hand. "It was a fun and wonderful and hard, and a strange job right out of college," Thrasher shared.
"SNL was a great place to learn about writing, listening and timing, but also to school myself about the ruthlessness of entertainment even when trying to make people laugh," he added. While Thrasher shared several experiences from his time at the show and said that it was "fun," he also mentioned, "For most of my time at SNL, I lived in mortal terror that I would screw something up and be fired. (Fortunately, the only time a music cue was missed, the technician fessed up that it was his fault and not mine.)" He further added, "But I wasn’t the only one living in fear. The whole process pitted everyone against each other."
‘SNL desensitised me to the allure of celebrity’
As part of his essay, Thrasher shared that during his time at 'SNL' he was "desensitised" to the "allure of celebrity." "Working at SNL desensitised me to the allure of celebrity since I had a job to do – at least, it did regarding our own cast’s fame. While on pins about making sure the script changes were distributed, I would still have to deal with guest celebrity bullsh*t from time to time," he shared. He said that it was "hard work that kept me on my toes."
"After all the changes were in the scripts – hopefully by midnight – I took my seat in the control room next to the NBC censor, a woman who seemed to have a lot more problems with puns about vaginas than those on penises," Thrasher recalled. "Some of the great laughs of my life were had watching seasoned SNL technicians try to stop themselves hooting, even after they had watched a scene rehearsed a dozen times," he added.
The former employee said despite all the challenges, he learned "so much in those two years." "That writing to extreme deadlines is a great way to get a lot done. That live TV teaches how to stay on your toes, and that you can’t let celebrities keep you from doing the job you are there to do – which has been an especially useful lesson subsequently as a journalist," Thrasher explained. "And, I learned that when older people tell the young’ns they have no talent (as was mostly said by old people about SNL’s young cast when I was there), and when young audiences say an old show is down for the count (as was largely said by young people about SNL itself), the story might just not be over quite yet," he added.