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- Pete Davidson doesn’t appear in the new documentary Lorne.
- Its director, Morgan Neville, has revealed why the actor-comedian didn’t make it into his film about Saturday Night Live boss Lorne Michaels.
- Neville interviewed several other former SNL stars for the movie.
Pete Davidson does not appear in the new documentary about his former boss Lorne Michaels.
Prolific filmmaker Morgan Neville, who chronicles the history of the legendary SNL creator in Lorne, recently explained why Davidson did not make it into his latest project.
“I interviewed so many people for the film, and at a certain point, after I’d interviewed [John] Mulaney and he had said everything he had said, I just didn’t know where we were gonna put more voices,” Neville told PEOPLE in an interview published Saturday. “It just felt like it was full, you know?”
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Neville also noted that he couldn’t ascertain “where anything’s gonna fit” as he interviewed numerous SNL alums. “That was the hard part,” the director said. “It was like an embarrassment of riches, that you could interview a thousand people about Lorne Michaels. So many people have stories.”
Neville also said Davidson was busy as he began production on the doc.
Lorne features interviews with SNL icons like Tina Fey, Chris Rock, Jimmy Fallon, Conan O’Brien, Maya Rudolph, and Andy Samberg, among others. Neville noted that he wanted to narrow down their conversations to focus solely on Michaels.
“I was just trying to distill his essence into a film,” he said. “A lot of those stories are not about Lorne — they’re about those people.”
Neville emphasized that he tried to avoid too many anecdotes about SNL as a whole. “I just wanted to make sure I was staying on Lorne’s story and not other people’s stories,” he said. “Because there are stories everywhere and it’s huge. There are thousand-page books about the show. So, it’s really just trying to get that essence of what makes him tick that I was just zeroed in on.”
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Davidson previously discussed his relationship with Michaels in the 2025 doc SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night. “After my first year, I actually called for a meeting with Lorne. I was like, ‘Please fire me,'” he remembered. “I was like, ‘I don’t belong here. Everybody here is so talented and they don’t want to be my friend.'”
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Michaels told Davidson that his experience was common at SNL, explaining that “you don’t figure it out until your third or fourth year” and that “it’s just gonna suck for like three or four years.” Davidson ultimately stayed on the show for eight seasons.
Lorne is playing now in theaters.