Lindsay Shookus isn’t famous. Or is she? As she enters the restaurant of New York’s chic Whitby Hotel, a few blocks north of her office at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, other diners narrow their eyes, trying to figure out how they know the tall blonde in the black leather jacket. Is she an actress? A musician? They’ve seen her before, but where? The idea skitters about their brains for a few seconds before disappearing in a puff, unanswered. They return to their $30 salads, unenlightened.
Shookus is fine with that. Her job is to make people famous, not to be the one turning heads. She’s a 37-year-old working mom with a supersuccessful career as a producer at Saturday Night Live. And, sure, she also dates a movie star named Ben Affleck, and she’s become tabloid fodder in relation to his divorce from that other movie star, Jennifer Garner. Google “Lindsay Shookus,” and an Us Weekly timeline of her relationship with Affleck is one of the first hits. (People seem really invested in when they started dating, as if there were nothing more important in our dumpster fire of a country than when two strangers first hooked up.) There are articles speculating that she was cheating on her ex-husband with Affleck, that he was cheating on Garner with her, that they possibly—no—got together soon after her daughter was born. The New York Post coverage is especially cruel, painting Shookus as a marriage-ruining temptress who hooks up with anyone and everyone in her path (her friend Jon Hamm! Chris Noth, whom she’s never even met!). Who would’ve thought that dating Batman could get a girl into so much trouble?
"It’s strange to me" is the line Shookus takes about her late-ish in life notoriety. Shookus is warm and quick and open, and only becomes guarded when discussing her personal life. Or, rather, her love life. She’s happy to chat about personal topics, from breastfeeding (had supply issues; turned pumping into “an Olympic sport”) to meditation (into it) to where she gets her hair highlighted (“Mure Salon on the Upper East Side—Benjamin is the best”). But when it comes to discussing her relationship with Affleck, she’d rather, you know, not. “My entire career has been behind the camera, and that’s definitely where I’m most comfortable. I’m a producer, I’m a mom, a friend,” she politely deflects. “Being considered a public figure honestly makes me laugh.” Then she makes a what-are-you-gonna-do face, as if dodging the paparazzi were just one of life’s normal annoyances.
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Shookus certainly isn’t seeking the spotlight. (Before you shout, “Then why is she in a magazine?,” know that ELLE approached her for this story, and it took a lot of convincing for her to do it.) She grew up in Williamsville, New York, where she thought “show business meant, like, the local news.” She and her mom had season tickets to the local theater downtown. “I remember feeling such a high, seeing all the performers and then wanting so badly to be in the show. Then almost feeling depressed when I left.” She did the whole high school theater thing before going to college at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where she majored in journalism. The summer after her junior year, Shookus landed a film PR internship in New York City. “That’s when I got the bug,” she says. “I realized you could have an actual career in entertainment. And I just had no reason to think I couldn’t do it.”
So she moved to Manhattan after graduating in 2002, and, like in one of those shiny Anne Hathaway movies, had a job as an assistant in the talent department at Saturday Night Live within weeks of arriving. She was a real go-getter, the kind of ambitious young employee who volunteers for every shit job. “I was the first one in; I was the last one out,” Shookus says. “I was always like, ‘I’ll go! Send me to the shoot. I’ll stay till midnight, it’s okay.’ That’s the glorious thing about being 22—you have the energy. I lived on 50th Street. I worked on 50th Street. I walked the same four blocks every day.”
Like in most success stories, Shookus benefited from a combination of aptitude, crazy work ethic, and a bit of lucky timing. She started under Marci Klein, an SNL producing legend (and Calvin Klein’s daughter) who’d been at the show since 1988 and is credited with discovering Will Ferrell, Jimmy Fallon, and Tracy Morgan, among many others. Shookus quickly became her protégé and a favorite of SNL creator Lorne Michaels’s. “Very early on, Marci let me interact with talent and take over more responsibilities,” Shookus says. “She just really liked me and she thought I was good. I think I came at the right moment at SNL. There was a space for me, and I was good at it.”
She was definitely good at it. In 2005, Shookus came across an audition tape for an unknown comedian named Kristen Wiig. “She saw my tape—I don’t know if it was lost in the shuffle or what—and she took it to the right people and was like, ‘I really think we should audition this person,’” recalls Wiig, who went on to star on the show for seven years. “Auditioning for SNL is a very nerve-racking experience, and Lindsay and I clicked. She kind of talked me down a little bit—I was very nervous. She was with me through the whole process; I’ll never forget that.” The two became close friends, spending “many nights out in the city,” Wiig says, laughing. “Lindsay is fun to get a drink with and is also one of the better dancers I know.”
Discovering Wiig gave Shookus street cred, and from there she rose and rose and rose. Along the way she got married to a coworker, a producer named Kevin Miller, whom she’d met on her first day of work. (I only know this because it’s mentioned in Shookus and Miller’s 2010 New York Times wedding announcement. Shookus is very protective of Miller, who coparents their five-year-old daughter, and of the details of their divorce.) In 2012, Klein left Saturday Night Live, and at 32, Shookus took over the top spot from her mentor, becoming one of only two female head producers on the show.
The job came with tons of pressure and expectations—SNL is only as good as its talent—not least of which were Shookus’s own for herself. And there was also one other little thing. “Within the span of five days, I found out that I was taking over the department and also that I was pregnant,” she says. “I was in a pure panic. Both of those things I’d wanted for so long—I just didn’t imagine it all happening at the exact same time.”
So she did what a lot of newly pregnant women do at work: She kept it a secret for as long as possible. In Shookus’s case, that was until she was 21 weeks along. “I wanted the chance to prove that I could do the job without everyone worrying, like, Uh-oh, she’s pregnant, she’s going to be a mom,” she says. (God, being a woman sucks sometimes.) “I had a lot to prove that year,” she continues. When she finally told Lorne Michaels the news, “I swear, I think my stomach grew five inches right then.”
On her due date, Shookus worked a 14-hour day; Justin Bieber was that week’s host and musical guest. “I wore heels and a dress, and at the end of the show, I remember Lorne looked at me and was like, ‘You going to the party?’ I was like, ‘No, Lorne. I’m gonna go have a baby now.’” After a six-week leave, she was back at it. “I was surprised at how healing going back to work was for me, in the way of, like, this is who I am. I’m not just a mom. It reminded me of what I’m good at and what made me feel good.”
Shookus’s position isn’t something you’d find listed on a job site. She oversees a team of eight junior producers, who spend their days scouting new music acts, searching every movie and TV show for potential hosts, and hunting for promising comedians. Wiig explains Shookus’s role as the show’s resident guidance counselor. “She’s very present with the cast; she’s at the read-through; she’s at the promos,” Wiig says. “She’s there every day and night. If you’re having trouble or just need someone to talk to, she’s definitely that person.”
Shookus also takes care of the hosts during the week of their show, accompanying them through the intense writing and rehearsal process. “I give Lindsay a ton of credit because it requires real nuance to make sure that everyone is happy—that your host and musical guests are happy, and they feel creatively satisfied,” says Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, a five-time SNL host, who, true to his reputation as the nicest man in Hollywood, sends me a long, gushing email about Shookus.
And she has a knack for spotting America’s favorite acts before America knows it needs them. Like Wiig. Or Sam Smith, whom Shookus booked to perform on SNL in 2014 before his album even came out in the U.S. “I went down to South by Southwest specifically to see him, because I’d heard his album and was just crazy for it,” she says. “In my head, I was like, No matter what happens, he will be a beautiful singer on our show.” In an emotional performance, Smith connected with the 7.4 million viewers; over the next few days, “Stay With Me” rocketed up the iTunes chart. “Honestly, it changed my life. And I’m not just saying that,” says Smith, whose album went platinum that year. “I remember the day after, I just felt a shift. I don’t enjoy singing on TV a lot of the time; I find it quite scary. But for me, SNL is a safe space. Lindsay is that safe space. I’ll never forget her taking a chance on me in that moment.”
Shookus is a star-maker! And a fairy godmother! (Miley Cyrus recounted the thrill of being paired with Paul Simon during SNL’s “40th Anniversary Special”: “Lindsay made that happen for me—she put me in the room with one of my idols!”) She’s also a 37-year-old woman who’s working on herself, like the rest of us. “I’ve put a lot of time in the past two years into just making myself better internally,” she says. We’re discussing kindness and empathy and the challenge of raising kids in such a mean world. “Self-love means something. I thought it was all a joke for a long time. It’s really important. Giving yourself a break is really important.”
Can the world give Shookus a break? I’m honestly not sure she cares. She’s clearly in a happy relationship with Affleck (“Sad Affleck” memes be damned); you wouldn’t go through the public grief she’s getting for any less. Her career is going well. She’s got tons of friends—she recently hosted a ladies-only gathering at her apartment that she called “Women Work Fucking Hard.” It wasn’t for any specific cause, “just to celebrate lifting each other up.” She has a cute daughter. She even threw her ex-husband a fortieth-birthday party. She’s good. “I’ve gone through a lot of change recently and I’ve gone through some really hard times, but I believe in who I am more, and I wouldn’t give that up for anything,” she says.
And, yeah, it’s weird that she gets her picture taken when she’s at Whole Foods and that America cares about her sex life. But, as she puts it, “Someone thinks about you for one minute and then says, ‘What do I want for lunch? ”
Top photo: Trench coat, The Row. Tank, Stella McCartney. Trousers, Max Mara. Suspenders, The Tie Bar. Necklace, Eva Fehren. Pumps, Brian Atwood. Her own bracelets.
Styled by Anatolli Smith; hair by Seiji at the Wall Group; makeup by Cassandra Garcia for Bobbi Brown Cosmetics; location: courtesy of Tishman Speyer
This article originally appeared in the June 2018 issue of ELLE.
