It’s no secret that working at Saturday Night Live is really hard. From the pressure of performing live and delivering a new show every week to waiting and waiting to see if you get on to the next season, there are tons of reasons why it causes anxiety. Now, Conan O’Brien has opened up about that, how it was worse years ago, and how Adam Sandler helped change the vibe to make work more fun.
This conversation came up when Conan O’Brien was talking to Andy Samberg about how stressful SNL 50 was and the digital short he made for it about anxiety (which you can stream with a Peacock subscription). It’s a topic that cast members aren’t afraid to talk about, and many have gotten candid about just how stressful and grueling the gig is.
During this discussion on Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, the podcast's host got real about the anxiety he experienced while working on one of the best sketch comedy shows of all time, explaining:
It’s so strange because so many people enjoy SNL, as they should. They should enjoy it without knowing what goes into the sausage. So, they’re not supposed to know the level of anxiety that some people…Some people manage to do it and not feel that. That’s not how I’m built. I always felt – and I was a writer, I was not a performer, but just a writer – I felt like there was a gun against my head all the time.
Later in the episode, Samberg and O’Brien came back around to the stress of working at SNL. This time, however, they focused on the former writer's tenure there. The Brooklyn Nine-Nine star asked if that generation was the last to face the really “intense and gritty” energy, and he confirmed that it was, which is how Adam Sandler comes into all this. O’Brien said:
I was in that state of mind, and I think, you know, [Robert] Smigel and [Bob] Odenkirk and Greg Daniels were like, 'It's life or death.' And it feels like that's kind of how everyone feels. And this guy named Adam Sandler showed up one day and he's like, he kept talking about 'Let's go get a milkshake.'
During their chat, O’Brien also confirmed Samberg’s assumption about the NBC show being more “competitive and grimy” during that time. However, things started to change when the Happy Gilmore star showed up, as he joked:
He was like, 'This is so much fun to be at SNL. Oh, I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it. Yippee!' And he had that, 'I'm going to do Opera Man. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. This is great, guys!'
There’s no question, Adam Sandler is an SNL legend who made a huge impact in the five seasons he was there. That’s evident in his sketches; however, this story from Conan also illustrates how his positive attitude played into it too. Ultimately, it at least helped the former writer realize that working at this show could be a good time. And while talking about how his colleague had fun on the NBC series and his own movies, he explained:
This is a possibility? You can like this?
Overall, I think two things can be true at the same time. You can love the work, and it can be extremely hard. That’s a mentality that’s seemingly been maintained on SNL since day one. Samberg noted that too in this episode, as he explained that while he adored working on the show, the intensity of it didn’t make it sustainable long-term.
Saturday Night Live truly is a beast of a production, and working on it is no easy feat. However, it can also be a grand ol’ time, which is what Adam Sandler made it. And it seems like he helped change things for the better for the folks who followed in his footsteps.
