Why Lorne Michaels looked out for Chris Farley during the SNL years

The tragedy of Chris Farley isn’t only about his death, it’s that it seemed to come directly from his admiration for John Belushi. Farley’s idolization could be charming, like when he would try on Belushi’s old clothes in the SNL wardrobe department; but it also headed where so many knew it would. As such, Lorne Michaels made it a duty of his to keep an eye on Farley the best he could.

As told by Susan Morrison, author of Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live, Michaels was deeply affected by the 1982 death of Belushi, who was an original player on SNL. And while drugs were around in subsequent eras, watch was specifically put on Chris Farley during his SNL run in the early to mid ‘90s. “When Belushi died, it really hit [Michaels] hard. And I think he felt like, oh my God, this whole approach of just letting people do their own thing on their own time, this was the wrong approach. We’re a tribe, we’re a group, and we have to look out for each other…So by the time Chris Farley comes along, you know, 10 years later or whatever, from the beginning he clearly had addiction issues.”

As it would turn out, Chris Farley would die two years after his SNL run, overdosing at the age of 33…the same circumstances and age as his hero. Unlike Belushi, Farley truly made SNL his home, staying on for five seasons alongside fellow Bad Boys David Spade, Adam Sandler and Rob Schneider.

Ultimately, Farley would be fired from SNL in 1995, although he had grown accustomed to it by then. As Morrison further recounted, “He couldn’t metabolize it, but Lorne had really changed his approach. He would ban Farley from the show for weeks at a time if he was too f*cked up. And he sent him to a series of really tough love rehab places. And obviously, it didn’t do it for him.”

While John Belushi was never the subject of a biopic, he was recently portrayed by Matt Wood in Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night. Farley, however, will be played by Paul Walter Hauser in a movie to be directed by Josh Gad.

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