Chevy Chase Reveals What Would’ve Kept Him on SNL — and How It Involved These Specific Words from Creator Lorne Michaels

Chevy Chase is revealing what Lorne Michaels could have done to make him stay on Saturday Night Live.

As longtime viewers of the sketch comedy show may remember — long before its landmark 50th season — Chase, 81, was a breakthrough cast member of SNL’s first season. In 1975, Chase was the first host of Weekend Update, which helped him earn two Primetime Emmy awards in 1976.

Soon after, he shocked fans when he left early in SNL’s second season.

Michaels, 80, said while profiled for The New Yorker ahead of his biography — Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live — coming out on Feb. 18 that he never intended to make Chase stay on the show.

The show creator told the magazine that he saw the turnover as a natural occurrence and recalled telling his colleagues, “The show would take a hit, but we’d still be okay.”

While Chase returned to host SNL eight times between 1978 and 1997, he believes there was a way he could have stayed on permanently.

It “wouldn’t have f—— taken much! All he had to do is tell me he loved me, basically. But his nature is to be above it in some fashion,” Chase told The New Yorker.

Although Chase told the outlet that he was a fan of Lorne early on, expressing that he “knew instantly that Lorne was a funny guy,” he attributed Michaels’ reluctance to show gratitude to him as a form of insecurity.

“Frankly, I always felt back then that I was smarter than him, that I was really the guy who got the show going, not Lorne,” Chase explained.

Chase would go on to find success through films like Caddyshack (1980), National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983), National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989) and NBC sitcom Community.