Andy Samberg’s ‘Saturday Night Live’ Schedule Was Borderline Torture
America’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” such as sleep deprivation and the confinement box, drew heavy criticism during the War on Terror in the mid-2000s, but no one ever talks about the simultaneous inhumanity of the Dick in the Box.
Given the frantic turnaround time of the comedy television institution, it’s never a surprise when a star on Saturday Night Live has to take a step back from the show because they can’t keep up with the brutal schedule. Everyone who voluntarily leaves SNL will, at some point, talk about the all-nighters and the dread-inspiring deadlines as a factor in their departure, whether they were an actor, writer, producer or some combination of the three.
However, within that notorious six-day workweek, not everyone at SNL suffers the exact same degree of sleep deprivation and over-extension, and those few lucky creatives who fill multiple roles on the show find themselves essentially working extra, extreme, mega overtime at a place where regular overtime is just, well, time.
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Andy Samberg, one of SNL’s most popular cast members throughout the aughts and one-third of the Digital Shorts team The Lonely Island, found that balancing both responsibilities in the same strenuous workweek made him feel, “physically and emotionally, like I was falling apart in my life,” as he told Kevin Hart in the most recent episode of the Hart to Heart talk show.
Samberg’s breakdown of his weekly schedule during his seven-year run on SNL further proves that his workplace didn’t allow him to maintain any degree of physical or mental health, and SNL certainly didn’t give him any windows to blow off some steam — even with a free boat ride for three.
When Samberg left SNL in 2012, much of the show’s fandom felt that the rug had been pulled out from under them, but for Samberg himself, the decision was one of survival. “It was a big choice. For me, it was like, ‘I can’t actually endure it anymore,’” Samberg told Hart. “But I didn’t want to leave.”
“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 before breaking down his schedule at the time. “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, 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,” Samberg summarized. “So I just kinda fell apart physically.”
While Lorne Michaels and his producers certainly didn’t give Samberg any special scheduling considerations when they charged him and his collaborators Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer with the pre-taped and meticulously edited Digital Shorts, The Lonely Island did enjoy a degree of creative freedom that’s rare for the comedy institution.
“I was basically left in charge of making the shorts, which I never pretended like I could do without them,” Samberg said of his partners. “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.”
Ultimately, it took another long-time SNL alum to convince Samberg that he could balance a career in comedy with a remotely healthy sleep schedule. He says that, after Amy Poehler SNL left to make Parks and Recreation in 2008, she told him that the sitcom schedule is “pretty chill” compared to their old workflow, which Samberg found to be true when he made his own post-SNL transition to star in Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
Still, Samberg explains, the sleepless nights and constant stress were all worth it to live out his childhood dream. “It’s all I wanted to do,” Samberg said of the show. “I got to be on SNL. It went way better than I expected.”
However, that nostalgia might just be a sleep-deprived hallucination — let’s see how he feels about the show after he’s had a full eight hours.
