In 1975, when host George Carlin took the stage for the very first episode of Saturday Night Live, he walked out onto actual bricks that had been laid just hours before by production designer Eugene Lee. Creator Lorne Michaels wanted to surround himself with fresh talent who would give his new sketch show a unique vibe: “just a bunch of hippies,” Lee lovingly recalled to Vanity Fair over the phone. And Lee, straight from the theater world, shocked and appalled the veteran TV crew hanging around the now-legendary Studio 8H by opting for that actual brick and real wood. “They said it was going to only have six shows. I guess they got it wrong,” Lee chuckles. More than 40 years, three Tony awards, 11 Emmy nominations, and a win later, Lee—one of the few surviving original crew members to still work on the show—is having the last laugh.

Lee still commutes into New York City for Saturday Night Live from his home and workshop in Providence, Rhode Island every Wednesday. Lee—who has no permanent New York address—sleeps at the Yale Club during the week but, at the age of 77, no longer hangs around to watch the show live and has a driver whisk him home after the Saturday dress rehearsal. “I work really hard for an old guy!” he says.

Lee and Michaels recently retired their tradition of occasionally getting the original crew members back together. “We don't do it anymore,” Lee says sadly. “Last year, we didn’t do it because there were so few of us it’s not worth talking about. The stage managers, they are all either gone or dead. Don Pardo died a few years ago. There is hardly any of us. There is one cameraman that claims he was around for the first show, but I’m always suspicious. We have a lighting designer, Phil Hymes, he’s probably the oldest living lighting designer—but he wasn’t around for the first show. There are so few of us now. Maybe it’s time for us all to be put out to pasture.”

But as long as Michaels wants to do the show—and Lee has some ideas about how long that might be—Saturday Night Live’s original production designer plans to be by his side. And while Lee has taken something of a step back from managing every facet of production (he leaves that to his “overqualified” team), he’s still very much in the inner circle. It’s Lee whom Saturday Night Live alums Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers called to design their own sets when they launched their tenures as late-night hosts.

And it’s also Lee who was able to tantalizingly hint at a secret new endeavor Michaels has up his sleeve. “I’m not supposed to talk about it,” Lee said nervously, “But Lorne and I have a little—it’s more him than me—a little project we are working on that is really insane. I can’t talk about it. It’s a little like Wicked,” Lee explained referencing his Tony award-winning work on the long-running Broadway musical. “Nobody thought Wicked was going to happen either. It got mixed reviews. How many years now?” Again, Lee has the last laugh.

But while Lee may not be spilling the beans on what he and Michaels have planned for the future, he is happy to reflect on the past. Here are some (literal) behind-the-scenes secrets from his 40 plus years on Saturday Night Live.