Saturday Night Live has featured some pretty iconic performers over the years. Of course, they don’t stay forever (except for Kenan Thompson). Some actors stay mum on why they quit or got fired, but many have been surprisingly candid!
Here are 30 former SNL cast members who revealed why they left the show:
1.
Seasons 44 to 50 cast member Ego Nwodim told Sherri, “It’s like being in a marriage. I’ve never done it before, but that show was my longest relationship ever. I’m not a commitment-phobe, but I heard when you’re married, you get the seven-year itch. And it’s like, I wanna date other people! I wanna see some other privates! It felt like the time to make space for something else for me.”
She also spoke about the importance of representation in the cast, saying, “I felt honored to be the seventh Black woman in that cast. I hope that there will be more Black women. Punkie Johnson came on the show after me. Who knows who else they’ll find as they explore and seek out other talents? I do believe I represented a myriad of characters, different types of characters. Some people didn’t always catch that nuance, but I do feel like I got the chance to represent, and that was really important to me.”
2.
On the Fly on the Wall with Dana Carvey and David Spade podcast, Season 46 through 49 cast member Punkie Johnson said, “Mutually, we just understood that it was not my zone… I never grew up in sketch, I never went to sketch school, and I didn’t really feel like I fit. [SNL] is for a different type of person.”
She wanted to leave after Season 48, but her team convinced her to stay on because she didn’t have a plan. On the next season, she was “killing it” with the help of writer Ben Silva, who “knew how to speak Punkie.” However, she “spiraled” after he left. She said, “I opened up the floor [on Instagram] for questions, and everything was going fine until somebody asked, ‘What are you looking forward to most next season?’ I ain’t gonna lie to my friends, so I just said, ‘Oh, I ain’t coming back.'”
3.
Season 1 cast member Chevy Chase told the Late Show with David Letterman, “The real reason has not been publicized correctly. It was a girl, and everybody on the show knew that, particularly Lorne [Michaels], with whom I shared everything. He was like a brother to me. But there was a girl who lived in Los Angeles who I was infatuated with and wanted to marry, and she wouldn’t move to New York.”
“When I say infatuated, I, you know, had an erection every day, all day, just thinking about her… I said to Lorne, ‘She’s not gonna move. She said if I don’t come back after one year here — and I was the only one with a contract — ‘I’m not gonna marry you. I’m gonna go out with Warren Beatty and people like that.’ And I went bats! I really left because of a girl,” he said.
4.
Season 31 through 38 cast member Bill Hader told Interview magazine, “SNL is really hard to do when you’re single and living alone. And then it’s pretty tough when you’re married, because you don’t see your spouse. And then you bring kids into it, and the minute our first daughter was born, it was like, ‘Oh, man, this is getting really hard.’ And then we had a second child. By then, Andy [Samberg] and Kristen [Wiig] had left, and I was hearing rumblings of other people leaving. It was time to move to LA and make a clean break.”
“I felt like I was in a good place with the show. I felt like every season I was getting a little bit better, and so instead of peaking, I was like, ‘Oh, this is a good time to leave.’ Lorne was really cool about it. I had made The Skeleton Twins, and this other thing called The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, two indie movies. But it wasn’t like I was going to LA having a bunch of stuff in the chamber,” he said.
5.
During the 2019 Evening with Stephen Colbert event, Season 8 through 10 cast member Julia Louis-Dreyfus described her time on SNL as “a pretty brutal time but a very informative time.”
She said, “There were plenty of people on the show who were incredibly funny. But I was unbelievably naive, and I didn’t really understand how the dynamics of the place worked. It was very sexist, very sexist. People were doing crazy drugs at the time. I was oblivious. I just thought, ‘Oh wow. He’s got a lot of energy.’ … I learned I wasn’t going to do anymore of this show business crap unless it was fun. I don’t have to walk and crawl through this kind of nasty glass if it’s not ultimately going to be fulfilling, and so that’s how I sort of moved forward from that moment. I sort of applied the fun-meter to every job since, and that has been very helpful.”
6.
Season 34 to 38 cast member Nasim Pedrad left SNL to star as John Mulaney’s roommate on the ill-fated sitcom Mulaney. She told Grantland, “When I first signed on to Mulaney, all I knew was that we were going to shoot a pilot. I never want to get ahead of myself with opportunities because in this industry, things can change so quickly. And as quickly as something can come together, it can fall apart or not get picked up. But one day, we found out that Fox had ordered 16 episodes of the show, and it became clear to me that it would be virtually impossible to be on two TV shows at the same time. It made sense to leave SNL now.”
She added, “I don’t think it’s ever easy to leave SNL, only because you know how special that place is. I certainly lucked out in that I had the opportunity to go and dive into a project also produced by Lorne Michaels. I certainly wouldn’t leave SNL for any project. But when Mulaney came to me with the show, I couldn’t pass it up. It kind of felt like a no-brainer.”
7.
Seasons 31 to 37 cast member Andy Samberg told Hart to Heart, “It was a big choice. For me, it was like, I can’t actually endure it anymore. But I didn’t want to leave. Physically and emotionally, like, I was falling apart in my life… 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. 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.”
The show wasn’t ready for him to move on. He said, “They told me straight up, ‘We prefer you would stay,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, that makes it harder.’ 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.”
8.
Seasons 16 through 20 cast member Adam Sandler was fired at the same time as his best friend, Chris Farley. Adam told the Daily Beast, “We kind of quit at the same time as being fired. It was the end of the run for us. The fact that me and him got fired? Who knows. We were on it for a few years, had our run, and everything happens for a reason. We kind of understood because we did our thing. It hurt a lot at the time because we were young and didn’t know where we were going, but it all worked out.”
He added, “I miss Farley. He was a tour de force on the show and dominated. He could dominate anybody. There’s nobody that can walk into a room and take over better than Farley. I haven’t seen anyone since he’s gone that’s taken that spot. He’s the strongest presence I’ve ever seen.”
9.
Seasons 26 to 32 cast member Maya Rudolph told Entertainment Tonight, “I was so sad when I left. I think it’s OK to, like, take that moment, but I also feel like it’s nice to see the rest of the world. You sort of forget, when you’re in SNL world, [that] there’s a lot out there. And they should go have fun.”
10.
Seasons 26 through 31 cast member Tina Fey left the show to focus on her own series, 30 Rock.
She told The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, “I’m out of the fake news business now. The new show’s going to take a lot of time… This is the big leap I’m making, it’s a show about working at a late-night comedy show. I’m very creative.”
11.
In 2019, Season 35 cast member Jenny Slate shut down longstanding rumors that she was fired from SNL a decade prior after accidentally swearing during a live broadcast. She told InStyle, “By the way, everyone always thinks I got fired for saying fuck: I didn’t, that’s not why I got fired. I just didn’t belong there. I didn’t do a good job, I didn’t click. I have no idea how Lorne felt about me. All I know is, it didn’t work for me, and I got fired.”
She continued, “I am a woman who has made so much of her own work, and I’ve had a variety of successes — some small, some personal, some public. I’m a New York Times best-selling children’s author, all of this stuff that is so intentional and worthy, but people often want to frame my success as an ascent from one failure that was the decision of some man who didn’t understand me 10 years ago. I just wonder, if I were a man, would people be so obsessed with the fact that I said a swear?”
12.
On Instagram, Seasons 48 to 50 cast member Devon Walker called SNL “toxic as hell.” However, he later told Rolling Stone, “To be frank, I guess the best way I put it is, like, me and the show kind of looked at each other, and we decided together that it was time to go our separate ways. I think I felt ready to leave the show, and I think the show felt ready to leave me. I was just ready to do something else. We both felt like it was time. This was such a big-time commitment and life commitment. There’s been a lot of life stuff that I feel like I’ve had to miss out on. And I felt ready to do a different version of my life. I think that me and the show are both ready to turn the page.”
13.
Season 14 cast member Ben Stiller quit after just four episodes. He told the NYT podcast The Interview, “[Lorne Michaels] was like, ‘Okay. Ben’s gonna do what Ben’s gonna do.’ It wasn’t great, but I knew that I couldn’t do well there because I wasn’t great at live performing. I got too nervous. I didn’t enjoy it, and I wanted to be making short films. So, like, in the moment, there were reasons why, and I had this opportunity to do this MTV show.”
14.
Seasons 42 to 47 cast member Melissa Villaseñor told The Last Laugh, “I gave myself a lot of time in the summer to think on it and kind of play it out in my head if I go back. It was, I think, at the end of the day, about my mental health. Last season, I had a couple of panic attacks. I think it was, I was struggling and…I always felt like I was on the edge of a cliff every week.”
She realized she didn’t want to do that to herself anymore. She continued, “It’s not like the show was mean toward me or anyone. I think I’m an introvert. I think when I’m in a big group of a lot of amazing people and everyone’s speaking over [each other], I think I tend to get small and I get nervous, like where do I fit? What am I supposed to do? … I was like, ‘I think I’m OK. I feel there’s nothing else I feel like, “Oh, I need to be sharing this. I want to do this on the show.” I think I’m ready.’ There was just something telling me I think I could part ways.”
15.
Seasons 31 to 37 cast member Kristen Wiig told Marie Claire, “I know a lot of people probably assume, ‘Oh, she’s leaving because she is going to be doing movies now and things like that,’ which I will be. But I just always knew it was going to be seven, and that was it. I think maybe if I were 22, I could see myself staying a little bit, but it just felt like the right time.”
“[The last episode] was very emotional. I just wanted to get through it without breaking down in every sketch. Because nothing says comedy like breaking down,” she said.
16.
As an already established name, Robert Downey Jr. was hired for SNL Season 11 to draw in new viewers. However, after ratings dropped to the lowest they’d ever been, Lorne Michaels fired Robert alongside most of the cast.
The actor told The Off-Camera Show, “I learned so much in that year about what I wasn’t. I was not somebody who was going to come up with a catchphrase. I was not somebody who was going to do impressions. I was somebody who was very ill-suited for rapid-fire sketch comedy. I was not of that ilk of The Groundlings. I’d never been part of any improv group, so I was kinda like, ‘Wow, this seems really hard and like a lot of work.’ But I would still say that, to this day, there’s not a more exciting 90 you can have, whether you are any good or not.”
17.
Season 11 cast member Joan Cusack was also let go at the same time as Robert Downey Jr. She told Fresh Air, “It wasn’t working, and it wasn’t working for me, too. I was miserable. I think I wound up in the hospital, actually. I had, like, some surgery, and it’s, like, horrible.”
18.
On Instagram, Season 50 cast member Emil Wakim said, “i won’t be returning to snl next year. it was a gut punch of a call to get but i’m so grateful for my time there. i was at six flags celebrating my friends 36th birthday and went on a really emotional walk through bugs bunny park and stared out across daffy duck lake thinking about life.”
He continued, “every time i scanned into the building i would think how insane it is to get to work there. it was the most terrifying, thrilling, and rewarding experience of my life and i will miss it dearly and all the brilliant people that work there that made it feel like a home. thank u to lorne for taking a chance on me and changing my life. i was so lucky to bring some of myself in there and say things i believed in and i’m excited for whatever chapter comes next. here’s to making more art without compromise. onwards and upwards.”
19.
Seasons 28 to 34 cast member Amy Poehler quit SNL to focus on her own show, Parks and Recreation, which was originally planned as a spinoff of The Office.
She told the LA Times, “It’s gonna be really hard — Boyz II Men hard — to say goodbye to yesterday. SNL was dangerous, late-night, last-minute, and star-studded, but like any good drug, you need to know when to put it down.”
20.
On the fourth episode of Peacock’s docuseries SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night, Season 11 cast member Damon Wayans said that the writers “would shoot [his] ideas down” and kept giving him stereotypical roles, some of which he’d refuse. So, 12 episodes into Season 11, he went off-book during the live taping of the “Mr. Monopoly” sketch, making his cop character into the “effeminate gay guy” stereotype. Lorne Michaels “fired him pretty much as he walked off the stage.” Damon said, “I snapped. I just did not care. I purposefully did that because I wanted him to fire me.”
However, he and Lorne remained in good standing, and he was invited back for the season finale. He said, “Lorne is a very forgiving man. And I think he just wanted to let me know that he believed in me.”
21.
On Instagram, Seasons 40 through 44 cast member Leslie Jones wrote, “Yes, it’s true I am leaving Saturday Night Live. I cannot thank NBC, the producers, writers, and amazing crew enough for making SNL my second home these last five years. Lorne Michaels, you’ve changed my life in so many ways! Thank you for being my mentor and confidant and for always having my back. You not only have my loyalty but you have my heart!! You have shown me skills I never imagined I had. I leave a better performer because of you.”
She continued, “To the incredible cast members: I will miss working, creating and laughing with you. I will miss holding it down with Kenan everyday, I will miss Cecily’s impression of me making me laugh at myself often, I will miss Kate’s loving hugs and talks when I needed. And of course Colin, you porcelain-skinned Ken doll. I will miss all my cast mates!! Especially being at the table reads with them!! Everyone needs to know Leslie Jones couldn’t have done any of the things I did without these people. One last thing – to the fans – you are the BEST!! Thank you for all the love and support through my SNL years and I know you will be as excited as I am when you see some of the amazing projects and adventures that I have coming up very soon! Love you all!! #iamnotdeadjustgraduating.”
22.
Season 19 cast member Sarah Silverman “was hired at SNL and almost immediately fired.” She told HuffPost Live, “It wasn’t like I did something wrong. I was hired, and the following season, they fired — it was like a whole new kind of — I was, I think, that last year of the Old Guard, and they started anew.”
“And by the way, I wrote not a single funny sketch, so that might have something to do with it, too,” she added.
23.
Seasons 36 through 41 cast member Taran Killam told Earwolf, “When Seth Meyers left the show, the dynamic changed quite a bit. He was the last person there who I witnessed really collaborate with Lorne, as opposed to just kind of do what Lorne says. And I also think the 40th [anniversary show] really sort of affected Lorne in that I think it was exciting, and I think it was flattering, and I think he was really able to sort of relish in this incredible institution that he’s responsible for and all these amazing iconic careers and all of his famous friends, and it had to have been the most potent overwhelming boost of a ‘this is your life’ experience ever. And then it all went away, and then it was back to this cast who’s all 40 years younger than you, and aren’t as famous as Tina Fey or whatever, and my experience was he became very impatient.”
In his experience, after Seth left as head writer, the show was “less of a happy place to be” and felt more like a “competitive, exhausting environment.”
24.
Seasons 19 to 23 cast member Norm Macdonald was fired alongside Season 2 cast member-turned-longtime writer James Downey in 1998. In 2014, James told Vulture, “Well, that was all due to [NBC executive] Don Ohlmeyer. Norm Macdonald, the anchor for Weekend Update, and I were writing a lot of jokes about O.J. Simpson, and we had been doing so for more than three years. Don, being good friends with O.J., had just had enough.”
James continued, “Yeah, we weren’t holding back. That’s the thing I kind of liked about Don, actually: his friendship with O.J. was so old school. It was so un-showbizzy. He ended up firing me, as well as Norm, but I can’t honestly say that a part of me doesn’t respect Don for his loyalty. Most people in show business would sell out anyone in their lives for any reason at all, including for practice. Don was the opposite. He threw a party for the jurors after the 1995 acquittal. And he stuck with O.J. through it all. I don’t know that Norm enjoyed the experience of the firing quite as much as I did, but to me it was exciting. It was certainly the best press I ever received. We got tremendous support from people I really admire, some of whom are friends and some I didn’t really know that well but who stepped up and called me. It was a fun time.”
25.
On Instagram, John Higgins, whose comedy group Please Don’t Destroy was part of SNL for Seasons 47 through 50, wrote, “I can’t believe how lucky I was to be a part of this show. It was my dream and I got to live it. And to do it with my two best friends and my dad [SNL writer/producer Steve Higgins] was an unbelievable experience. Thank you to everyone who made my time there so special, it made this decision that much harder. But for now, I’m excited to pursue acting opportunities that I’ll announce soon but today I’m just grateful for everything we got to do. As that fat lil bear Winnie the Pooh once said, ‘How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.'”
26.
Seasons 37 to 42 cast member Jay Pharoah‘s contract wasn’t renewed in 2016. The following year, he told Hot 97, “You go where you’re appreciated. If you have multiple people on the cast saying things like, ‘You’re so talented, and you’re able, and they don’t use you. It’s unfair, and it’s making us feel bad because they don’t use you, and you’re a talent…’ They put people into boxes and whatever they want you to do, they expect you to do.”
He said that he was put into an “impression box,” where he was expected to mainly do impressions of Black celebrities. Jay also said he wasn’t the kind of person to say “yes” to everything, and he wasn’t afraid to put his foot down and decline some of the writers’ ideas. He also discussed the backlash he faced behind the scenes from speaking up about the lack of Black women in the cast. He alleged producers “were ready to get rid of [him] in September 2013 when [he] spoke up.”
27.
Seasons 16 to 18 cast member Chris Rock “got fired because [he] was leaving to go to In Living Color.”
He told WTF with Marc Maron, “The decision was, like, the culture’s changing, and I’m not a part of it. This shit is getting hip, this shit is getting Blacker, this shit is getting fucking rap-ier… Like, SNL is still a pretty white show, but back then it was… When I got hired, I was the first Black guy in, like, eight years, and Living Color was just hip… I wanted to be in an environment where I didn’t have to really translate the comedy that I wanted to do. I had these instances where they wanted me to do certain things at SNL. I was like, ‘No, I’m not doing it.'”
When Marc asked for examples, Chris said, “Whatever slave sketch or Ubangi tribesman or whatever, where, not that I thought that they were racist, I just thought that, if you’re the only Black face that’s going to be seen for an hour and a half, it just doesn’t…there’s gotta be more, or another Black person. It feels racist. It’s not racist, it just feels when that’s all you see.”
28.
On Live with Kelly and Ryan, Seasons 37 to 47 cast member Kate McKinnon said, “I thought about it for a very long time, and it was very, very hard. All I ever wanted to do in my whole life was be on Saturday Night Live. So I did, I loved it, I had the best decade, and then I was just like — my body was tired, and I felt like it was time.”
29.
Season 34 cast member Michaela Watkins was let go in 2009. She told Entertainment Weekly, “The only explanation I got from [Lorne] — and he’s not known to say things just to make people feel better — was that he felt deep down that I should have my own show. And I agreed. SNL was a dream come true for me. It was a fantastic year. I don’t have any regrets.”
She continued, “What he said is he’s trying to get what’s best for him and best for me. He said it had nothing to do with talent. And I’m just going to go on that. That was his only explanation. He’s looking at the whole mix of the show, and maybe he feels that what I bring would be better served on a sitcom. They hired two new gals [Jenny Slate and Nasim Pedrad] that I think are going to be exquisite.”
30.
And finally, Chris Parnell was fired from SNL twice — first in 2001 for unknown reasons, then in 2006 because of budget cuts. After his initial firing, he was quickly brought back.
In a Reddit AMA, he said, “You know, as I understand it, both Will [Ferrell] and [Chris] Kattan went to bat for me to Lorne. And I think it certainly helped. And I know one of the writers T. Sean Shannon, he wrote a scathing sketch that was read (at the table, I understand it) that condemned my firing, and took everyone to task about it. Yeah, I never knew exactly why I was fired? I heard from somebody it might have been an NBC executive who didn’t care for my stuff? But I think Will and Chris went to bat for me, which definitely helped. It was crazy. It was a very difficult time. But I was very glad to go back to the show.”
If you got to pick one former Saturday Night Live cast member to stay on the show forever, who would you choose? Let us know in the comments!
