Breaking news from the vaults of TV history! It’s the week of October 23, 2004, and in case you missed it (or tried to forget it), that’s when Ashlee Simpson’s epic performance on Saturday Night Live made waves — or, well, more like ripples of confusion.
Picture it: It’s a crisp Saturday night, you’ve got your popcorn ready, and you’re watching SNL when… dun dun dun! Ashlee starts lip-syncing. Yes, that’s right! Her voice was coming from the speakers, but her mouth was like, “Nah, I’m good.”
Now, at this very moment, in an ironic twist of fate, the 60 Minutes crew happened to be snooping around, interviewing SNL creator and professional cool cucumber, Lorne Michaels. And wouldn’t you know it, they captured his reaction to this music-meets-mime debacle. The newly released audio (because who wouldn’t want to relive this?) just dropped on the podcast 60 Minutes: A Second Look. And trust me, it’s pure gold.
Lorne, ever the Zen master of live TV disasters, calmly uttered, “Oh, I think accidents happen. That’s the nature of live television.” Yep, that’s right. Ashlee’s lip-sync-o-rama? Just another happy little accident, like spilling your coffee but only on your least favorite pair of pants. Casual.
But hold up, because 60 Minutes reporter Lesley Stahl wasn’t going to let him off that easy. She hit him with, “But isn’t it your job to make sure these things don’t happen?” You know, like a TV dad making sure no one throws spaghetti at the wall during dinner.
Lorne, still cool as a frozen cucumber, responded, “Right. But there are things you just can’t control.” Like, say, gravity or Ashlee Simpson’s vocals. “You don’t control the rain,” Lorne added, as if the rain is somehow to blame for this whole mess. Clearly, rain is the real villain here.
Lesley couldn’t help but point out how unnervingly calm Lorne seemed, as if he’d just accepted the chaos of live television like a seasoned rodeo clown. “It’s like being a ballplayer and it’s rained out,” he explained. You know, because lip-syncing is just like a baseball game getting canceled due to rain. The analogy checks out…sort of.
“And I was in the control room going, well, I mean, there’s just egg out there now. There was nothing to watch,” he admitted, which is the most poetic way to describe the feeling of helplessly watching a train wreck in slow motion. In this case, the train was Ashlee, the wreck was her vocals, and the egg? Well, that was all over everyone’s face.
A moment in TV history where Ashlee’s lips and voice went their separate ways, and Lorne Michaels shrugged it off like a minor case of the hiccups.
