Judd Apatow’s new book of interviews Sick in the Head has been in stores for a week now, and among the many juicy stories in the book is from Apatow’s 2014 interview with Louis C.K. about his second time hosting SNL. C.K. told Apatow that his monologue from the episode (you can watch it below) caused some heated arguments with Lorne Michaels, judging from his memory of their initial meeting about it:
“It’s like meeting the president. It’s, like, very important. And [Michaels] says ‘So you did twelve minutes in the monologue. How much do you want to do on-air?’ I said ‘I want to do all twelve.’ and he goes, ‘You’re not doing twelve.’ He goes, ‘It was good but there was a lot of air in it, a lot of stopping and starting. I know there are cuts in there.’ My face turned red. I was angry. I was like, ‘Well, I don’t know. I thought it was pretty good. And fuck you.’ I was really mad. And then later this woman comes in and says, ‘Uh, we’re one minute under.’ And so I go, ‘Then I’m doing twelve.’ And Lorne turns to me and goes ‘Calm down.’ I was really insulted. He said ‘I’ll give you seven and nobody’s ever done seven.’ And I said, ‘What if it goes long? What if I go over and end up doing ten or more?’ And he goes, ‘Then we’ll know that you’re very undisciplined and unprofessional.’ And everybody laughed.”
With some help from Michael Che, C.K. decided to cut four minutes from the monologue after watching it on tape and coming to the realization that it wasn’t that great. It took until the last minute, but ultimately, C.K. says it all worked out:
“I just started chuckling. I was like, This is f*cked up. This is live television. This is f*cked up. And I went out and it just — it was all there for me and I was able to sail. The audience was at the right place. They looked a little critical but I felt like, It’s going to be okay. I’m going to bring this material and you’re going to like it. F*ck, did that feel good.”
Watch the monologue from the episode below:
