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Here’s Why Julie Kavner Boycotted the Only ‘Simpsons’ Episode Where Marge Doesn’t Speak

Here’s Why Julie Kavner Boycotted the Only ‘Simpsons’ Episode Where Marge Doesn’t Speak

Alyson Lewis
December 06, 2024

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This issue is about one of the greatest moments of Ricky Gervais’s life, a debunked Chevy Chase rumor, myths and mistruths, funny tweets, and much more.

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Ricky Gervais Says That David Bowie Calling Him A ‘Chubby Little Loser’ Was One of the Greatest Moments of His Life

We can be heroes, just for one day — and Ricky Gervais will remember it for the rest of his life.

An inextricable part of the Extras and The Office creator’s legacy in the entertainment business is his brief foray into pop music, starting his career as one half of the short-lived new wave group Seona Dancing in the early 1980s. Like his most famous character David Brent, Gervais thought of himself as a musician first, everything else second. But the world of Brit Pop apparently told him that he has a face for comedy, not Glastonbury. Still, even when he became the U.K.’s most internationally celebrated TV comedy creator, Gervais continued to take inspiration from his earliest musical influences, including from his personal hero, David Bowie.

The Inside Story of the Most Famous Joke from the First-Ever ‘Weekend Update’

A lot has changed about Saturday Night Live over the last 50 years, but the faux newscast “Weekend Update” has always remained more or less the same. Like it was on the very first show, it’s still a parody of the news with an anchor telling topical jokes based on what’s going on in the world that week. Sometimes there have been two anchors instead of just one, but the formula has otherwise gone unchanged.

One man who worked on that very first “Weekend Update” was Alan Zweibel, who has since written for a number of other legendary TV shows and movies (It’s Garry Shandling’s Show and Dragnet chief among them) and is the author of Laugh Lines: My Life Helping Funny People Be Funnier. While he’s had a storied career, I recently asked Zweibel to narrow in on the fall of 1975 and share what it was like to write the very first “Weekend Update” with Chevy Chase.