Saturday Night Live alum Sarah Silverman has credited fellow comedian Conan O’Brien with saving her career after her unceremonious exit from the popular comedy sketch series.
Silverman, 54, was an SNL cast member and writer during its 19th season before she was dropped after one year.
On Wednesday, the stand-up comic stopped by The Howard Stern Show, where she reflected on the difficult period after SNL, saying: “Conan was the best thing for me.”
She explained that O’Brien would invite her onto his Late Night talk show even after her firing. “That was his first year [on Late Night], was my first and only year at SNL. And he put me on all the time, even after I was fired, all the time, and that was the start for me,” Silverman recalled.
“And I wouldn’t have been able to be on Conan without SNL,” she added. “And it was an incredible kind of boot camp experience.”
Silverman fondly remembered her time on SNL, describing the experience as “so amazing” and “so magical.”
“But there is just something about it where they just have this energy that puts you in your place where you feel like a piece of s***, and you’re terrified,” she said. “The anxiety… it’s very hard to be zen and chill there.”
Further recounting Andy Samberg’s special SNL 50 sketch about “the anxiety of doing something for SNL,” Silverman hailed it as “very honest. I thought a lot of people connected to it that were there. We all feel like losers here for some reason.”
While the Wreck-It Ralph voice actor has previously said her firing from SNL wasn’t due to any personal reasons — it simply came at a time when the show was looking to overhaul its old tone — she still found it to be unexpected.
“I was totally thrown for a loop when I was fired, because it never occurred to me that was possible,” Silverman told Stern. “But I think it’s definitely for the best.”
During her brief stint on SNL, from 1993 to 1994, Silverman, then 22, only managed to write one sketch that went through to dress rehearsal. However, it ended up getting cut prior to airing.
“I wrote not a single funny sketch,” she admitted in a 2014 interview on HuffPost Live, “so that might have [had] something to do with [being fired], too.”
Acknowledging that she was not ready for SNL at the time, she said: “I’m funnier [now]. I’m so much funnier. The fact that [creator] Lorne Michaels saw anything in me at that age, and at that time for me where I don’t think I was close to where I would become, is impressive for him.”
Silverman has since released several comedy specials, including Netflix’s A Speck of Dust (2017) and HBO’s Someone You Love (2023). Her new special, PostMortem, will be available to stream on Netflix from May 20.
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