What It Was Like the Year After I Left SNL
38 alums describe a spectrum ranging from “devastating” to “awesome” to “unmitigated chaos.”
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We’ve all heard stories about what it was like to audition for Saturday Night Live, or how challenging it is to adjust to the show’s relentless pace. But how does it feel during that first year post-SNL, when suddenly you don’t have to pull constant all-nighters but also don’t get the weekly adrenaline rush that comes from writing, producing, and performing in a live show in such a limited time? Whether they were fired or chose to move on, spent many years on staff or just a season, many SNL alumni describe a similar mix of feelings: grief, excitement, confusion, numbness. Sometimes there’s FOMO: “It’s weird not being there on Saturday night when all your friends are still there,” says Rachel Dratch. Sometimes the career gets a bump. “I had a really great first year after I left the show,” says Sasheer Zamata. And sometimes there’s what Bobby Moynihan describes as “unmitigated chaos.” Here are 38 descriptions of the first year post-SNL from cast members and writers.
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A relief. —Nora Dunn
I slept a whole lot more. —Taran Killam
Like getting out of hell. —Harry Shearer
Depressing as fuck. —Jorma Taccone
After being there 20 seasons, it was sort of like amphetamine withdrawal. Real life can’t compete with the pace of SNL. —James Anderson
Aimless and off-balance and very often sad, yet I had much more time to recognize this. —Fred Wolf
Like I was visiting an entirely different planet. —Nasim Pedrad
Very much not midtown-based. —Julio Torres
It was a roller coaster. A shock to the system to not have the constant stimulation each week. A combination of relaxing and chasing the high. —Abby Elliott
Ask my therapist. —Jeff Richards
It was a bummer, to be totally honest. When you get that show, you don’t see yourself being fired, so processing that was tough. —Brooks Wheelan
Unmitigated chaos. —Bobby Moynihan
The first couple of days sucked. I moved back to L.A. Jon Cryer kindly invited me to the set of Two and a Half Men to hang out and cheer me up. I impersonated him on the show a couple of times. He’s a great guy. —John Milhiser
That first job after I was like a deer in headlights, afraid the culture was going to be the same. But another writer friend snapped me out of it. I became a much better comedian. I’ve had great jobs since and a career I never could have imagined possible. —Christine Nangle
It was a very public “letting go” and also letting go of a huge dream, so there was a lot of mourning. I was fully prepared to have to work ten more years before anyone knew what I could do, but fortunately I booked my next big job within the year so had a pretty quick clapback at people who were kind of uncool about it. —Noël Wells
Well the first month was devastating. I left New York immediately thinking my career was over and I blew it. But then shortly after I got a movie and realized that SNL was a badge of honor and gave me a career. —Jon Rudnitsky
Terrible. I left early (in retrospect, it was a poor decision) before my contract was up, and Lorne was mad at me. My brother got cancer and had no insurance, and all the money I had managed to save was flying out the window on his treatment. My parents moved in with me into my very small house, and they also had no money to help out. Then the Pat movie came out and was the biggest bomb of any SNL movie (even though I still think it’s pretty good). And then to top it all off, I got cancer! That all happened in the first six months after I left. But it all seemed to work out in the end, I must say. I did a successful one-person Broadway show about my cancer, the movie was well-received (God Said Ha!), I found my place in Hollywood again after my brother passed away, and my parents went back to Spokane. —Julia Sweeney
It’s weird not being there on Saturday night when all your friends are still there. It’s definitely an adjustment. —Rachel Dratch
Very scary, but luckily, like Chris Rock said, “I met Lorne Michaels, and I haven’t been broke since.” —Jay Pharoah
Tuesday nights (writing night) were weird for a while. I was so used to that pressure of having to write something on those nights, I had to distract myself the first few weeks. I took Amy Poehler’s advice when she said that on the first writing night I’m not there, I should go out to a fancy dinner to celebrate the fact that I no longer needed to work until ten in the morning. —John Lutz
I immediately started working on a show I had sold to another network. It was nice to be busy right away, but it definitely felt crazy not being there. For the first few months, I felt obligated to sit down and watch dress rehearsal on the studio feed, which I still got on my phone. They shut that off at a certain point, and I realized I could, like, go out to dinner or something. —Anna Drezen
It was a challenging, going from having tremendous creative freedom to writing for a failed NBC sitcom about a federal prosecutor. In retrospect, a series about prosecuting terrorists, drug dealers, and child pornographers isn’t exactly comedy gold. —Hugh Fink
For me, it was pretty good. That was when my career really picked up. It was right after 9/11 — I was happy to be out of New York and come back to L.A. A lot of things took off for me as a performer. Being on SNL opened a lot of doors, too, for people to pay attention to the stuff that I was doing onstage, which wasn’t just straight stand-up. I was able to do a lot of stuff on television, a lot of appearances as myself, and do the stuff that I wrote and wanted to do. —Jerry Minor
It was a little sad there for a while, but I soon landed on The Daily Show and ended up having a blast there and really growing as a comedian, performer, writer, and actor. —Rob Riggle
I had a really great first year after I left the show. My first stand-up special, Pizza Mind, was released. I was in the indie films The Weekend and The Outdoorsman. I booked an NBC pilot called So Close. I had a role in I Feel Pretty. And all of that gave me the confidence to move to L.A. to keep auditioning for things, and I’m fortunate that my career and life have been going really well since then. —Sasheer Zamata
Weird. I moved down the hall to Late Night With Seth Meyers. So it was like going to college in the parking lot of your high school. —Alex Baze
I jumped right into starting up Late Night With Conan O’Brien as head writer, the most thrilling opportunity I’ve ever had. I’m not sure I’d have ever left SNL had it not been for something that exciting. —Robert Smigel
I started working on NewsRadio. It was quite delightful. —Lew Morton
I continued playing the piano. —Paul Shaffer
We did Gilda Live, then I began doing stuff in L.A. Overall deals — Michael O’Donoghue and I wrote some films together. There was a lot of work! SNL was such a hit, to be offered work was not a difficult circumstance to be in. —Marilyn Suzanne Miller
Humbling and also great. Having only gotten to do one season, I was very sad, rejected, and confused at being let go. But, I met the love of my life and wrote a TV show with my friend Damon that opened with a sketch I never got to do on the show. The series sold and aired for a year. One door closes … —Michaela Watkins
New baby, new show. —Amy Poehler
I had a great year. I moved to Hollywood and immediately had two holding deals and worked in TV and movies right away. I was constantly onstage in Los Angeles and met many comics in L.A. that I never knew of. It was a magical year. —David Koechner
Exciting. I moved to L.A. I would have gladly continued doing SNL, but that wasn’t an option. So I packed the bags, carried the little bit of SNL cachet that I had, and started grinding out a career in Los Angeles. Even struggle was exciting, because I was in the middle of it all. —Gary Kroeger
Awesome. I did two movies back-to-back: Who’s Your Caddy? and The Comebacks. I enjoyed being out of New York City. —Finesse Mitchell
A friend of mine was producing a show on Channel 5, the ABC affiliate in Boston, that was live from 1 to 2 in the morning. He had fired the host. Five All Night, Live All Night — it was like The Tonight Show. I did that, and it was immensely popular. Boston is a college town; everyone was up at 1 to 2 in the morning. I had the greatest time. I boxed with Marvin Hagler, I wrestled with Killer Kowalski. I had Arnold Schwarzenegger on the show — he wasn’t acting; he had just written a hugely popular weightlifting-training book. Then Stripes came out, and Billy Murray came on the show! —Matthew Laurance
Mike Shoemaker gave me a good piece of advice, which was to tell Lorne before the year started. Commit to leaving. He told me it was so Lorne could spend the year looking for a new “Update” producer, but I think in a very Mike Shoemaker way, he was really advising me to spend the year adjusting to the idea of not being there. So I was okay. I moved to L.A. and started writing for The Office and adjusted pretty well. But I had hundreds of nightmares — we all did, and still do — about the show going on and I’ve failed to do something I was supposed to do. They plagued me that first year. —Michael Schur
Feels weird that the show goes on without you. Feels like they should’ve stopped when you left. —Akiva Schaffer
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