Questlove discusses his Emmy nod for ‘SNL 50: The Homecoming Concert’ and how ‘The Tonight Show’ experience prepared him to lead the music for the historic event. In addition to Outstanding Music Direction for ‘SNL 50: The Homecoming Concert,’ the Oscar winner is also nominated for co-directing ‘Ladies and Gentleman… 50 Years of SNL Music’ and directing ‘Sly Lives!’
“Even four years after the Oscar, I’m still kind of in the, ah, gee, shucks, is this really happening mode right now,” says Questlove of being honored for his work.
Questlove, up for three Emmy Awards including Outstanding Music Direction for ‘SNL50: The Homecoming Concert,’ reflects on the high-stakes production that brought together 30-plus songs in one night. He recounts how years at ‘The Tonight Show’ sharpened his timing, adaptability, and ability to put artists at ease—skills that proved invaluable for navigating the whirlwind of rehearsals, nerves, and live execution that made the concert a landmark in ‘Saturday Night Live’’s 50th year.
‘SNL 50: The Homecoming Concert’ was a one-night-only concert broadcast live from Radio City Music Hall with a star-studded lineup of musical artists and comedy guests. Hosted by Jimmy Fallon, the invite-only audience saw legendary ‘SNL’ hall-of-famers, iconic guests, and surprise musical performances.
‘SNL 50: The Homecoming Concert’ is currently available to stream on Peacock.
Awards Focus: It’s so nice to meet you today. How are you doing?
Questlove: I’m great. I’m great.
AF: You’re nominated for three Emmy Awards this year, including Outstanding Music Direction for SNL50: The Homecoming Concert. How honored are you?
Questlove: Man, this is the best outcome of a freshman wearing new clothes in a new way ever. It’s not a dream. I want to get to the place where I’m just like, Oh, I’m so honored. Even four years after the Oscar, I’m still kind of in the, ah, gee, shucks, is this really happening mode right now, which still makes it a fun place to be. I’m very much happy that that we got some acknowledgment for the massive mountain we had to climb to pull that off.
AF: Yeah. How did you first get approached to be part of ‘The Homecoming Concert?‘
Questlove: It was such a casual, And oh, by the way, da-da-da is happening. Sure. Okay. Yeah, no problem. I have a habit of doing this—all the projects that you see me doing, usually the seed gets planted maybe two years or three years ahead of time.
You got to go back to 2021 when I finished ‘Summer of Soul’ and it was making the rounds of festivals and whatnot. Without any context, I got summoned to Lorne’s office and if you work in this building and you get called to the 17th floor and you get called to Lorne’s office, either your life is about to severely change or you’re about to get fired. My guitarist was like, “Well, if you were to get fired, you would have been called to HR already.”
I was nervous, man. I was like, Man, there must’ve been a tweet I put out or I said something slick at an ‘SNL’ afterparty. Why else would Lorne be calling me to the office? He was like, “Yo man, I want to congratulate you on that movie. I loved it. I seen it twice.”
In my mind, I’m like, Holy shit, you know who I am? Even though he’s the first person I met that hired me to come to ‘The Tonight Show,’ but it was such a nervous reverence for when G-d summons you to the 17th floor.
He had pitched me first about—he’s like, “Look. The 50th is coming up in a couple of years and I want to get ahead of the train. I want to do five documentaries about ‘SNL’ and I want you to handle the one about music.” Oh man, I’m honored. Thank you. I appreciate it.
“Oh, and by the way, we’ll probably also call you as well about doing a musical celebration.” Sure. Because 2025 seemed like it was 12 years from now, so yeah, okay, no problem. And then 2022 came by, the Oscar went, and then 2023, and then when crunch time came, oh boy.
It’s one thing to be editing the ‘SNL’ doc I was doing in addition to editing the Sly doc as well, but Jesus man, to also start prepping. Even though it was lightweight work to do in terms of doing the actual show, the preparation of it all was probably the hardest part of this whole ordeal. The first meeting was just name every artist in existence and let’s figure out if they could fit in the ‘SNL’ ecosystem.
He calls me and Mark Ronson to his office and then we’ve had at least four or five meeting on the minds of 17 people all weighing in. Is DaDaDa home? Is DaDaDa on tour? Who has blah, blah, blah’s number? Well, I can call DaDaDaDaDa. Well, I’ll call Bruno. I’ll call Lady Gaga.
A lot of that started happening. And then it became the, All right, who’s going to pitch the idea of doing something? Really, it’s asking artists—what winds up happening is you have to make the artist feel at ease first. They have to agree to it first, so that’s some of red tape. You gotta call the lawyer, call the manager, call the record label, call the publicist to get the artist, or it’s just like, alright, they’re not answering quick enough, just call the artist up and ask them if they want to do this.
And so there’s that process, and then there’s the process of getting them to trust The Roots to be their band, which, because of the 16 years of ‘The Tonight Show,’ a lot of them are well-versed and well-familiar with us to be like, Yeah, that should be fun.
There’s not much time for rehearsal because once you realize that you’re doing 30-plus songs, then it’s, Okay, we got time to run this thing five times in a row and there’s no time to jam out and ask questions and nerd out about this Talking Heads song or asking da da da about this album. We got to be disciplined. It’s the preparation of it all.
And also, probably the thing that has made The Roots grow as musicians and being here for 16 years is now there’s no challenge that we will never ever meet with trepidation. We’re so used to, Guys, quick, I need a song. Can you learn the Springsteen song in five seconds? Hang on. Okay, we got it. One-two-three-four.
Literally, that’s what it’s like being at ‘The Tonight Show,’ where Jimmy any moment is just gonna throw to The Roots and, “You guys can DaDaDa concerto by Beethoven, right?” Yeah, Jimmy. 1-2-3. Literally, that’s what it’s like.
There were three moments even doing that show in which we had to learn—my computer’s right there on stage with me and we have headphones on and we’re learning songs maybe 10 minutes before we even execute it. That’s not even talking about James Poyser having to learn an additional 15-17 songs for that Will Ferrell and Ana Gasteyer bit.
He can’t see them, there’s no eyeline. The timing of those three have to be so in sync to make that sketch work. You’ve not seen anything in life until you watch Will Ferrell learn the first verse of “Not Like Us,” having only heard it twice in his life. He went into a closet and sat for seven minutes. We waited for him at Radio City.
He’s like, “I need seven minutes.” He goes into this closet space with his headphones and literally came out like, “Okay, let’s start it.” He nailed it. He’s like, “I had to hear it five times in a row just to get the rhythm right.” He nailed it perfectly.
It’s preparing for the whirlwind and the tsunami is the rehearsal preparation part of it. But once you’re on stage, it was gravy.
AF: Coming from ‘The Tonight Show,’ what skills or experiences did you find the most useful in tackling the concert?
Questlove: When Jimmy first got ‘The Tonight Show,’ I think Letterman and Paul came by just to congratulate him, see him off, and all those things. Letterman told him something that none of us ever lost. He said, “When you’re in this environment, everything you ever learned in your life is going to be used in this building for this job.”
So you’re going to realize that you’ve been preparing all your life for this moment, which I think I resisted that maybe for the first two years because I was stubborn. I was like, Yo, nah, man.I’m a five-time Grammy winner and I’m in a band and I just happen to be here at my side job, but this ain’t my destiny. I wasn’t dreaming about being the next Paul Shaffer or Doc Severinson. And sure enough, by the seventh month, every musical reference I ever learned, every comedy reference I ever learned, anything to do with timing and execution, I had to use for this job. So that said, I had to learn—a lot of this stuff is not even musical stuff, it’s relationships.
It’s knowing that Cher’s gonna be a little bit nervous in having to rehearse this song cold in front of strangers she don’t know and is it gonna be like how my guys do it, what she’s used to? There’s the pre-talk. I know that I have to get them alone, make them feel comfortable, and then hold their hand and walk them. There’s a lot of, one could say nuancing, one could say Jedi mind-tricking, but with each artist, you just have to make them feel comfortable.
Jelly Roll was a little nervous about Johnny Cash’s time signature changes on “Walk the Line.” Brandi Carlile has a Whitney Houston “And I Will Always Love You” grand ending of her song, and she wants to make sure that that one tom-tom, boom—that was probably the most nervous I’ve ever been to do a drum solo, and it was literally just one hit, boom.
You have to learn relationships, how to put people at ease, how to Jedi mind-trick people. You can’t be right, even if the artist is wrong on a count. “No, that wasn’t right.” I used to—back in the day, in the early years of ‘The Tonight Show’—be like, “No, we did.”
If you’re in a relationship, do you wanna solve the problem or do you wanna be right? Maybe the first two years of being here, like, No, Bruce Springsteen, that was actually four bars and we did it and you’re wrong. No one wants to be embarrassed in front of—there’s a whole lot of nuancing that you learn in these 16 years of being at ‘The Tonight Show’ that really prepared us.
The workload that we took on that weekend, and not to mention, there was another SNL show on Sunday of the same thing that we had to do musically. Just the amount of workload we had to take, you almost had to be here at ‘The Tonight Show’ for 16 years in order for it to not affect you and to execute it perfectly.
AF: Was there any leeway in run time or did it have to be a very tight three hours?
Questlove: This to me is the best education for—even if you don’t succeed in 30 Rock University, even if you don’t, and by succeed, I mean, I think everyone’s goal is either to be the next Eddie Murphy, to make the next 30 Rock, or to be the next Sandler, you know what I mean?
Anyone who’s ever stepped in this building, be them intern or Teamster, carpenter guy or a five-time host of the show, if you let it, this place will improve you without you even knowing it. That’s the thing, that’s the bottom line is that coming here, you’re not gonna be the same.
I will freely admit that despite The Roots’ critical acclaim and all the Grammys that we had and all the Oh my G-d, the Roots are incredible. We thought we were hot shit. I will tell you, by year 10, I realized, like, Wow.
Because you’re so immersed in the comedy world that you first realize that comedy and music are transferable because both of them rely on timing, a story, a punchline. So right now, our songwriting game is so ace because of the amount of exercising that we did in this gym of 30 Rock.
Writing micro-songs, writing micro-themes, learning the punchline should go here, the setup will work better. Watching those guys figure out the diagram of a setup, a buildup, a punchline, a better punchline, you can now apply that to your craft.
That’s the thing. That level of education is what prepares you for this moment.
AF: Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure.
Questlove: Thank you.