New book on ‘Saturday Night Live' creator Lorne Michaels touches on Chris Farley's time in Alabama trying to get clean

Yahoo

05-04-2025

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) — A new book on Lorne Michaels, creator and producer of the long-running variety show 'Saturday Night Live,' touches on one of the show's biggest stars going to Alabama in an attempt to get clean.
In 'Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live,' author Susan Morrison writes about the television producer's life and his connection to the show he has, with the exception of a few years in the 80s, run since 1975 on NBC.
Morrison, an articles editor at The New Yorker magazine, goes through many of the big stars who started on the show, from John Belushi to Bill Murray and Adam Sandler, but several pages are dedicated to Chris Farley, who appeared on the show for five seasons from 1990 to 1995, becoming one of its breakout stars.
In one passage, Morrison discussed the first and only time he hosted the show on October 25, 1997, less than two months before he died from a heroin overdose at his apartment in Chicago. This would be the last time Michaels would see Farley alive.
When Chris Farley went to 'the place in Alabama' to get sober
'He was in terrible shape then, too– drinking, taking drugs, even bringing a couple of of prostitutes up to the office,' Morrison wrote.
Morrison used this episode to discuss how several years prior in 1992, Michaels had put Farley on leave from the show after discovering his drug use.
'Farley had struggled with heroin while he we on the show; after getting clean once and relapsing, he'd been suspended by Michaels, who sent him to a tough-love rehab facility in Alabama.'
Although Morrison doesn't specifically mention the facility by name, it was later revealed to be the Mary Lee Zawadski Clinic, which operated in the basement of the Randolph County Hospital in Roanoke.
'He was a very kind, kind man and caring, very sweet,' founder Mary Lee Zawadski said in an interview with CBS 42 on the 25th anniversary of Farley's death. 'But Chris had little self-control. He was very impulsive. He could get in trouble.'
Morrison said Michaels wanted to send Farley to rehab not only as a way to scare him straight, but to avoid past mistakes he had made with other cast mates who had died, such as Farley's comedic hero, John Belushi, who also died from a heroin overdose in 1980.
Michaels knew that the show was what Farley liked best, so taking it away from him, he hoped, would make an impression,' she wrote. 'Since Belushi's squalid death, Michaels had rethought his approach to employees' drug problems. His former value system, he said, was 'As long as people showed up on time and did their job, it was nobody's business what they did in their bedroom or in their house. That value system turned out to be wrong. He'd tried much harder with Farley, but it wasn't enough.'
Zawadski said the first time Farley went through her program, he and dedicated himself to staying sober.
'He followed directions, he did all his assignments, and he was very serious,' Zawadski said. 'He was a very serious recovering person at that time.'
However, sobriety would not be a road Farley would stay on long, relapsing in 1997 and going back a second time. However, this time it didn't take.
'The second time he came back, he was totally different,' she said. 'He was an ass. He was arrogant,' Zawadski said.
In her book, Morrison said Michaels and his children were on vacation in Aspen, Colorado when he received the news that Farley had died. Within a few days, he and many other SNL counterparts made their way to Madison, Wisconsin–Farley's hometown–for the funeral.
'In the the jammed pews, Chris Rock and and Adam Sandler were sobbing,' she wrote.
For her part, Zawadski said Hollywood and fame proved to be too much for Farley to handle.
'Chris is someone, in my opinion, who should've worked at a bank or with people he could have fun with,' she said. 'Instead, he worked in a place that had no reality. LA is a place with no reality. He didn't know how to handle it. It was too much for him.'
The book is available now.
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