Andy Samberg Explained How The Grueling "SNL" Schedule Led Him To "Physically And Emotionally" Fall Apart Before He Left

Andy Samberg explained why he chose to leave SNL and the "heavy toll" it took.

Andy was hired for SNL alongside his Lonely Island bandmates Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer in 2005. Their digital shorts quickly went viral, with many of their songs surpassing 100 million views. Andy quietly left the show in 2012, saying in a statement at the time, “It’s an incredibly emotional and strange moment in my life. Obviously, it’s not a huge shock, but I did officially decide not to come back.”

In a new interview on Kevin Hart's show Hart to Heart, Andy said that joining SNL was his "dream" since he was a child. "Before we started getting going on digital shorts, there weren't as many pre-taped pieces," Andy recalled. "They started asking us to do ours every week, whether we had an idea we liked or not. Which we were grateful for — most weeks."

"But after, like, five years of that, Kiv and Jorm's contracts as writers were up, and they both sort of left but would come back to help me out," he continued, noting that it was a "discussion" when it came to them leaving the show for other projects.

“I was basically left in charge of making the shorts, which I never pretended like I could do without them,” Andy explained. “We made stuff I’m really proud of in my 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.”

Ultimately, it was the grueling schedule at SNL that got Andy to leave. He said, "Physically, it was taking a heavy toll on me, and I got to a place where I hadn't slept in seven years, basically. 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, all 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.”

Adding that it was "a big choice" to leave, he continued, "For me, it was like, 'I can't actually endure it anymore'...physically and emotionally, I was falling apart in my life."

Andy subsequently spoke to cast members who had left SNL, like Amy Poehler, though he was initially concerned about leaving the "intoxicating" quick turnaround from ideation to live television. He was asked to stay but ultimately made the "difficult choice" for his "mental and physical health" — noting that other SNL cast members had experienced burnout.

Though Andy had some projects lined up, he said that he thought at the time, "Even if it doesn't go as well, I got to do the thing I wanted to do. Everything past this point is icing. But it was hard, I didn't like leaving."

Hart to Heart is now available for streaming.