Michaels would have invited Sinéad O’Connor to sing at SNL50 if alive

Lorne Michaels says he would have invited Sinéad O’Connor to perform Nothing Compares 2 U at Saturday Night Live’s 50th anniversary, had she been alive. The admission comes as the SNL creator reflects on the show’s most infamous moment—O’Connor’s 1992 tearing of a photo of Pope John Paul II during a War performance—and how attitudes toward the stunt have evolved alongside the memory of the artist, who died in 2023.

O’Connor’s 1992 appearance remains one of the program’s most debated broadcasts. While delivering a protest aimed at the Catholic Church’s handling of abuse cases, she ripped up a picture of the pope while singing Bob Marley’s War and urged audiences to “fight the real enemy.” The incident sparked a wave of complaints and contributed to her being excluded from SNL in the years that followed. Michaels has acknowledged that his reaction at the time was shaped by the expectation that the show could not easily pivot back to its comedy format after such a moment, and he has repeatedly described the event as inappropriate and dishonest for not being disclosed in advance. He compared the aftermath to the shock one might feel at an uncomfortable, unintended disruption in a...