‘SNL’ writer recalls Andy Samberg sketch that Lorne Michaels hated: ‘One we’ll never live down’

The lightbulb never quite went off for Lorne Michaels on this one.

If you’ve ever watched Saturday Night Live and wondered how some of the sketches got approved, know you’re not alone. Even Lorne Michaels, the top producer of the 50-year-old television mainstay, sometimes doesn’t know what the heck his team is thinking. One such time was when Andy Samberg, Kristen Wiig, and special guest Hugh Laurie appeared as singing lamps with shotguns back in December 2008.

Seth Meyers brought up the old oddball sketch, “Lamps,” on the most recent episode of The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast. His cohosts Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone barely remembered it, which oughta say something. Luckily, he had texted former SNL head writer Rob Klein who had so much to say he sent back a rather lengthy and cathartic voice note.

Klein, who at the time was just in his second year at SNL, thanked Meyers for the opportunity to tell his and Samberg’s “side of the story.”

The sketch — which is not available on the show’s YouTube account — opens in a lamp store owned by Fred Armisen and Michaela Watkins. When they leave, Samberg, Wiig, and Laurie come out as humongous singing lamps. But when they are discovered, they take the owners hostage and there’s a lot of yelling. Will Forte plays a grandfather clock, too. It’s a whole thing.

“Andy wrote the title, and we wrote the first page of it before we had any idea that the lamps were going to sing. So at a certain point, Andy, as a lamp, just started singing, and we were having a blast. Little did we know that the sense of fun was going to soon be replaced by one of the darkest weeks of my professional life.”

Klein explained that his fellow SNL writers were “already pissed off” just seeing the sketch’s title. “If we had called it ‘Lamp Store,’ they would have thought it was normal. We called it ‘Lamps.’ It’s a sketch about talking lamps,” he said.

He recalled that it was a “hot table” that week, meaning many of the sketches presented for selection were good. Somehow “Lamps” made the cut. “There was a sense of playful mockery before that — ‘you guys are silly’ — and a lot of people saw their sketches kill at the table… and then not get picked. So people are angry. Soon I find out, no one is angrier about the sketch ‘Lamps’ than Lorne Michaels.”

Samberg’s co-writer thought, at first, that Michaels was pro-“Lamps” but he soon learned this was not the case.

“He doesn’t think it makes sense,” Klein recalled being told. “He doesn’t understand why the lamps are singing. And I would say we absolutely had no response to that. If you’re looking for an explanation, we simply didn’t have it.”

When it came time to set up the sketch, SNL writer producer Steve Higgins “who was always extremely generous” reportedly said, “You know this is kind of a mess, right?”

“Lorne also came to the control room during blocking, which was rare,” Klein remembered. “He asked me why the first song had the same melody as ‘Food Glorious Food’ from Oliver. And I think I impressed him with my response. I said, ‘I don’t know.’ And he left.”

Klein added that he probably didn’t speak directly to his boss again for about a year.

The lamp costumes were, in Klein’s memory, “eight hundred pounds and hot and suffocating.”

Klein continued, “I’m watching on the monitor and I already know I’m on thin ice with Lorne while Kristen Wiig, a pro of pros and an absolute trooper always, [has the] life draining from her face as she’s being forced to wear an 800 pound costume. At some point people run in like, ‘get it off her!'”

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly‘s free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

“But we got to Saturday,” Klein said. “It was fine. I think the expectations had been lowered so much that Lorne was like, ‘oh, okay. Whatever. Run it.'”

“That’s ‘Lamps’. One we’ll never live down,” he concluded.

Meyers came back on the mic to predict that when Samberg next appeared on the show, he would say the sketch is actually better than everyone remembers, and added that “Andy has real ‘Lamps’ trauma because people made fun of it for a long time afterwards.”

And while Rob Klein may have thought “Lamps” was a career killer, it clearly was not. He stayed with SNL and was even promoted to head writer in 2013, maintaining that position for three years. He then continued with the show for two more years as a not-head writer. More recent work includes writing and producing for shows like Shrill and A.P. Bio.

For more of this week’s The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast, which also includes an appearance from Amy Poehler, watch below.