Andy Samberg’s Life Was Falling Apart While He Was On SNL

By Andrew Sanford | Celebrity | July 12, 2024 |

By Andrew Sanford | Celebrity | July 12, 2024 |

Saturday Night Live has a notoriously grueling schedule. The week starts slowly enough. People often come in late on Tuesday afternoon. There is a pitch meeting with the host. Sketch topics are chosen, and then it’s all-nighters, rewrites, and rehearsals until show day. It can be … tough.

Many cast members have relied on outside influences to keep up with the schedule. Uppers. Downers. Making fun of Rob Schneider. Everything was on the table (or mirror) if it helped get them through the week. But for some, the schedule becomes too much, and they choose to pull themselves from the board. One such person to do that is Andy Samberg.

Samberg appeared on the show from 2005 to 2012. It didn’t take long before he became a breakout star. Not only was he funny in sketches but Samberg, along with comedy troupe buddies Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone, helped pioneer Digital Shorts on SNL. The show had done plenty of filmed sketches before, but Samberg, Schaffer, and Taccone took them to the next level, capitalizing on a new thing called YouTube.

Despite his success, Samberg had difficulty performing on the show as he explained to Kevin Hart on his show Hart To Heart. When Andy left the show he did so to protect his health. “For me, it was like I can’t actually endure it anymore,” Samberg explained. “Physically and emotionally. I was falling apart in my life.” There has been plenty of tragedy in the halls at SNL. So, it’s good that Samberg put his health first.

He explained to Hart that he needed to reclaim some sense of normalcy in his life. The schedule was too damn much. “Physically, it was taking a heavy toll on me, and I got to a place where I hadn’t slept in seven years,” Samberg continued. “…It’s basically like four days a week you’re not sleeping, for seven years. I just kind of fell apart physically.”

It wasn’t that Andy Samberg wanted to leave SNL. He explained that leaving was a “difficult choice,” but his reasoning was understood by his fellow cast members. “Everyone was like, ‘Oh, same,’” Samberg told Hart. “No one was like, ‘What?’ Everyone was like, ‘Oh, yes, yes. This is just what happens.’ Like, you hit a wall. We’re not built to operate that way.”

He isn’t wrong. So much of the world is built on “Hustle Culture” that the idea of quitting one of the most successful shows of all time to focus on health may seem strange to some. It isn’t strange, it’s welcome.