Andy Samberg reveals why he left ‘Saturday Night Live’ after 7 seasons: ‘I was falling apart’
Like a boss.
Andy Samberg, 45, has revealed the real reason why he left “Saturday Night Live.”
“It was a big choice. For me, it was like, I can’t actually endure it anymore. But I didn’t want to leave,” Samberg said on the latest episode of Kevin Hart‘s Peacock interview series “Hart to Heart.”
“Physically and emotionally, like I was falling apart in my life,” Samberg said.
Samberg, who has been married to singer Joanna Newsom, 42, since 2013 and shares two kids with her, rose to fame on “SNL.”
He was a cast member and writer from 2005 to 2012, becoming known for his “digital shorts,” such as his famous “dick in a box” sketch with Justin Timberlake, his “Lazy Sunday” sketch with Chris Parnell, and his catchy songs with amusing lyrics, such as “Like a Boss,” “I’m on a Boat” and “The Space Olympics.”
Samberg told Hart that he wanted to be on “SNL” since he was 8 years old.
The first blow to his morale happened when his friends and Lonely Island collaborators Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone — who also started with him in 2005 — left when their writing contracts were up in 2010.
“I was basically left in charge of making the shorts, which I never pretended like I could do without them,” Samberg said about Schaffer and Taccone’s departure.
“We made stuff I’m really proud of in those last two years, but there’s something about the songs that I can only do with Akiva and Jorm. It’s just how it is, we’re just a band in that way,” he explained.
The grueling schedule also had a negative impact on him.
“Physically, it was taking a heavy toll on me and I got to a place where I was like I hadn’t slept in seven years basically,” Samberg explained.
He added, “We were writing stuff for the live show Tuesday night all night, the table read Wednesday, then being told now come up with a digital short so write all Thursday [and] Thursday night, don’t sleep, get up, shoot Friday, edit all night Friday night and into Saturday, so it’s basically like four days a week you’re not sleeping, for seven years. So I just kinda fell apart physically.”
He asked Amy Poehler — who he overlapped with until she departed in 2008 — for advice.
“I had talked to Poehler and other people that had already gone,” Samberg revealed.
“I was like, once I go, when I have an idea, I can’t just do it,” he recalled. “The craziest thing about working there is once you get going, if you’re just in the shower and you have an idea that s–t can be on television in three days, which is the most, like, intoxicating feeling.”
His departure after Season 37 was without much fanfare. He only confirmed that he wouldn’t return weeks after that finale.
“They told me straight up, ‘We prefer you would stay,’ and I was like, oh, that makes it harder,” he went on.
“But I just was like, I think to get back to a feeling of like mental and physical health, I have to do it. So I did it and it was a very difficult choice.”
Samberg, who went on to star in “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” for eight seasons, hosted the Emmys, made movies such as “Pop Star: Never Stop Stopping” and starred in the critically acclaimed movie “Palm Springs,” said he felt less pressure on the rest of his career, since he’d already achieved that childhood dream of being on the NBC variety show.
He told Hart: “Even if it doesn’t go as well, I got to do the thing I wanted to do so everything past this point is icing.”
