If you thought Eddie Murphy and Jack Nicholson were unlikely guests for SNL’s 40th anniversary special on February 15th, get ready for another surprise: In a new interview with Deadline, former SNL producer Jean Doumanian – who briefly took over for Lorne Michaels after he left the show in 1980 – confirmed that she will also be attending the live event:
JEREMY GERARD: Do you want to make a comment about the 40th anniversary of Saturday Night Live?JEAN DOUMANIAN: Congratulations. JEREMY GERARD: Anything else? JEAN DOUMANIAN: Listen I’m the only woman to have produced a 90-minute comedy show. I got Eddie Murphy, Denny Dillon. And my ratings were as good as the ratings the previous year when we went off the air. That happens to be true. And I’m going to the 40th anniversary. I think it’s certainly a landmark accomplishment to have a show on for that long. You can’t do anything but congratulate success. Right? Look, if you really love something and it fails, well that’s a chance you take. If you don’t really love it but you think it can make money and it doesn’t — then you got what you deserved. And if you love it and it doesn’t make money, you try to make it up to your investors by giving them something else. They always take another chance because my investors come in only if they really love it. So I’m not asking them to do something against their will. They’ve been pretty fortunate so far.
Doumanian’s short era as SNL producer has been mostly bashed by critics, fans, and even former writers and cast members of the show in Live from New York (former NBC president Fred Silverman called her SNL episodes “unwatchable”), so it’s pretty notable that Doumanian would want to return to Studio 8H over 30 years after she was fired from her SNL post.