Remembering maker-of-muchlaughter Norm Macdonald
Q: I was sorry to hear of Norm Macdonald’s passing. Which years was he on “Saturday Night Live”? – Jim Aylward, via e-mail
A: The late comedian joined the NBC staple in 1993 as both a writer and a performer. He stayed for five seasons, spending three-and-a-half of those as the anchor of the “Weekend Update” segment, but he was removed from that role in 1998. A then-nbc executive claimed it was because of ratings, but Macdonald said he believed it was due to jokes he made about O.J.
Simpson, who was a close friend of the executive (who maintained that wasn’t the reason). Macdonald and
“SNL” parted company soon afterward.
In October 1999, Macdonald returned to the show as a guest host, and he didn’t hesitate to opine in his opening monologue that the program had gotten “really bad” ... thus his receiving the call to come back to it, supposedly. He also was present for the 40thanniversary special in 2015, joining fellow “SNL” alumni Seth Meyers, Kevin Nealon and Colin Quinn to
present a tribute to Chevy Chase.
Q: What was the name of the sci-fi series Halle Berry did several years ago? – Adam Reiss, Buffalo, N.Y.
A; That was “Extant,” which CBS aired during the summers of 2014 and 2015. Oscar and Emmy winner Berry played an astronaut who came back to Earth pregnant ... a major mystery, since she was the only one aboard her 13-month mission in space, and also since she’d had fertility problems before. The show’s second and last season also was notable for casting husband and wife Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Hilarie Burton, who have worked together again since on “The Walking
Dead.”