The SNL cast exit rumor may be whirring but Saturday Night Live UK is just beginning and commissioner Phil Edgar-Jones has been on a fact-finding mission in New York learning from Lorne Michaels and Jon Hamm.
While noting at today’s Creative Cities Convention (CCC) that the iconic NBC chatshow remains “still huge,” Edgar-Jones described the long-gestating UK version, which will be “awash” with new talent, as a “risky proposition” because “we don’t have that history of live comedy in the UK.”
“If it works then it is something where we want to grow talent,” said Edgar-Jones, who runs unscripted originals for Sky. “We will have an entirely new cohort of comedians.”
When Saturday Night Live UK got announced, Edgar-Jones joked: ” Someone emailed me immediately and said, ‘That’s brave’, which no one likes to hear.”
Edgar-Jones was in New York last month seeing how the sausage gets made. “It was brilliant. It’s still huge,” he said. “I was in the writers room watching them pitch to Lorne and Jon Hamm and it was a fascinating process to watch.”
Deadline is told that Michaels will spend quite a bit of time in the UK over the next year training up UK writers. We revealed recently that Sky and Universal Television Alternative Studio are eying James Longman, the executive producer of The Late Late Show With James Corden, as showrunner.
Since the Brit version got unveiled, Edgar-Jones said his inbox had been “awash with phenomenal new talent.” “There is new writing talent, on-screen talent and a big opportunity for a lot of freelance workers as well,” he added “It’s a big operation.”
The show will certainly be a tall order. John Oliver, a Brit-made-good in the U.S., recently slammed the new version. “It sounds like a terrible idea,” Oliver told the Late Night with Seth Meyers show several weeks back.
SNL turns 50 this year and Deadline wrote earlier about the rumor mill heating up regarding which of the cast might leave the show this summer.
Edgar-Jones was speaking at the CCC in Bradford after the likes of YouTube UK boss Alison Lomax and Paramount UK chief Sarah Rose. He was recently promoted to Executive Director of Original Unscripted.
