Lorne Michaels, the creator and producer of NBC’s sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live, recently talked to Entertainment Weekly about Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s finally accomplished visit on the show.

Saturday Night Live’s favorite mocking target this season has been Republican runner-up Sarah Palin, whom former head writer and cast member Tina Fey has impersonated to perfection and one great question lingering on everyone’s minds was whether the politician would make a guest appearance herself.

We all received an answer Saturday night, as the Alaska governor was among a number of special guests who delivered SNL’s most highly rated episode, with the average audience estimated to be at 14 million – the biggest figure the show has seen in 14 years, since figure skater Nancy Kerrigan hosted and soul singer Aretha Franklin performed in 1994.

Lorne Michaels, who co-created the show in 1975 with Dick Ebersol and Herb Schlosser, told Entertainment Weekly that Palin’s people had contacted SNL the Monday after Tina Fey first impersonated the Alaska governor in late September, booking the show just a couple of weeks ago.

It was a tightly kept secret because, explained Michaels, it had happened before that someone booked the show, it was confirmed to the media and the person never made it, creating an awkward situation.

Sarah Palin was true on her word though and there she was Saturday night, live from the SNL studio, standing beside Michaels and watching Tina Fey on a monitor do yet another parody of her.

Fey-as-Palin pretended to have her first official press conference and interrupted reporters’ questions to show them some “fancy pageant moves,” while special guest Alec Baldwin walked up to the SNL boss and Palin, whom he ostensibly mistook for Fey, to plead with Michaels not to let “our Tina” out with that “horrible woman.”

When told he was in fact standing next to Palin, Baldwin unabashedly told her, “You are way hotter in person.” He then escorted her on a tour of the studio, finally arriving where Fey was confidently mocking her. The two women barely crossed paths and Palin said the famous intro, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”

Questioned on Palin’s appearance on the show, Michaels told EW he considered her “a very powerful, very disciplined, incredibly gracious woman,” albeit he does not share her politics. He also said she could easily have her own show.

As to off-screen interaction between Fey and Palin, Michaels was the embodiment of discretion, only saying the two women talked and that there was “no kicking and screaming.”

As to the rap song performed by Amy Poehler during the show, which included Eskimos, a dancing moose who gets shot and snow, the executive producer revealed that Palin was never supposed to sing the song herself and that her apparent last-minute withdrawal was “all part of the act.”