Saturday Night Live is pulling out all the stops for its 50th anniversary. In addition to the four-part docuseries SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night, which features behind-the-scenes footage plus celebrity and cast member interviews, NBC is also producing a separate documentary focusing on musical guests that have appeared on the show over the past 50 years - and it has the perfect director.
Deadline reports that Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, drummer for The Roots, record producer, and DJ, is directing the SNL doc.
Questlove is no stranger to the world of music documentaries, having produced and directed the Oscar-winning doc Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), which details the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. The new film, titled Ladies & Gentlemen... 50 Years of SNL Music, will be co-directed by Oz Rodriguez, a former segment director for SNL.
Speaking about the project, Questlove said, "Everyone knows the most famous SNL appearances, whether it's Elvis Costello, Prince or the Beastie Boys, but they're the tip of a huge iceberg... The process of going back through the incredible archival footage was like being in a time machine, DeLorean or other. I'm so happy I went on the trip and now get to share it with everyone."
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There are certainly plenty of classic performances to look back on. The aforementioned Costello, for instance, famously stopped his performance mid-song and launched into another tune, "Radio Radio," which he'd been asked not to play, leading to a 12-year ban from the show. Or how about when Ashlee Simpson's vocal track malfunctioned, revealing she'd been lip-syncing her performance and cutting her second song short. Then, of course, there's the infamous incident when the late Sinéad O'Connor ripped a photo of the pope in half and shouted, "Fight the real enemy!"
Ladies & Gentlemen... 50 Years of SNL Music will feature new interviews with Costello, Bad Bunny, DJ Breakout, Miley Cyrus, Billie Eilish and Finneas, Dave Grohl, Debbie Harry and Chris Stein from Blondie, Mick Jagger, Dua Lipa, Darryl DMC McDaniels (one half of Run DMC), Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, Kacey Musgraves, Olivia Rodrigo, MC Sha-Rack, Paul Simon, Chris Stapleton, Justin Timberlake, Lee Ving of the punk band Fear (whose Halloween 1981 performance is infamous in its own right), and Jack White, among others.
The documentary, which will run about three hours in length, is set to premiere on January 27, 2025. Questlove also serves as executive producer alongside SNL creator Lorne Michaels.
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Saturday Night Live
The longest-running sketch-comedy/satire show on television, premiering in 1975, Saturday Night Live is a weekly series that features new hosts for each episode, with a core cast of actors and comedians that rotate over time. Episodes feature several skits that are sometimes ad-libbed on the fly, with the hosts engaging in most of them, and also provide musical guest performances that cap off each night.
Release Date October 11, 1975 Network NBC Seasons 50 Streaming Service(s) Peacock
