The power of the people made itself felt in a rewarding way in the past few months, after a Facebook petition was created calling for Betty White to host “Saturday Night Live.” Eventually, more than half a million people signed, and, in a move of great good sense and great good humor, Lorne Michaels, the show’s producer, duly invited White (or, rather, re- invited her—she had been asked several times before). The result was a lot of fun: an eighty-eight-year-old woman, with a sixty-year television career, kicking some energy and professionalism into a show that, while technically not dead, stubbornly refuses to really live. White obeys all the rules of good behavior except when it comes to what she says; you just don’t expect someone with her grandmotherly sparkle to be quite so wicked and dirty.
This story is from the August 19, 2024 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the August 19, 2024 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
MIRROR IMAGES
‘A Different Man” and The Substance.”
THE FOOTBALL BRO
Pat McAfee brings a casual new style to ESPN.
OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY
Proximity to wealth proves perilous in Rumaan Alam’ novel Entitlement.”
EYES WIDE SHUT
How Monet shared a private world.
WITH THE MOSTEST
The very rich hours of Pamela Harriman.
HUGO HAMILTON AUTOBAHN
On the Autobahn outside Frankfurt. November. The fields were covered in a thin sheet of snow.
TRY IT ON
How Law Roach reimagined red-carpet style.
SORRY I'M NOT YOUR CLOWN TODAY
Bowen Yang's trip to Oz, by way of conversion therapy and S..N.L.”
SNIFF TEST
A maverick perfumer tries to make his mark on a storied fashion house.
LET'S HAVE A LONG TALK ABOUT OUR RELATIONSHIP JUST BEFORE BED!
Babe, are you nodding off? I know we’re both exhausted after a long day, a dinner party at which you made a three-word comment that left me feeling like you don’t know me at all, and the subsequent ninety-minute fight that culminated in a tentative truce.
