Former “Saturday Night Live” star Vanessa Bayer revealed that she was forced to lie to her family for a month when she landed the coveted gig after hearing “horror stories” of past cast members.
During Wednesday’s episode of the “Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Danson” podcast, Vanessa Bayer opened up about how she couldn’t tell anyone she was cast in SNL when she was moving from Chicago to New York City ahead of her debut.
“It was crazy,” Bayer shared. “[It was] just a month of lying to everyone close to me.”
Bayer said she sat outside of “SNL” creator Lorne Michaels’ office for nearly 3 hours before meeting with him a week after she auditioned to find out if she was hired.
Michaels ended the meeting promising that he’d be in touch within the next 24 hours with a decision, which forced Beyer’s parents to stay awake for the entire time.
It wasn’t until a week after the meeting that a producer called Beyer and offered her a spot as a featured player on the late-night sketch show in 2010.
Bayer wasn’t allowed to tell anyone — including her parents — that she was offered the job until NBC publically made the gig official because she’d heard “horror stories” about the other cast members blurting it out too early.
“What was so crazy was I was so excited, and they said, ‘Please don’t tell anyone because we’re going to make an official announcement about it,’” Bayer said.
Bayer grew impatient amid two weeks of waiting for NBC to reveal that she’d be joining the show alongside new castmembers Jay Pharoah, Taran Killam and Paul Brittain.
The Ohio native quietly shared the life-changing news with her parents, her best friend Gwen and her brother but begged them to keep quiet.
“It was getting to the point where, like, I told my parents — I swore them to secrecy because I had heard horror stories about cast members telling people too early,” Bayer added. “Nothing horrible had ever happened, but I was so warned. My agent in Chicago was like, ‘You cannot tell a soul.’”
Eventually, the news of her new gig did leak ahead of the announcement in industry magazines and papers.
When rumors were spreading ahead of the official announcement, Bayer was already living in New York City getting ready for the show but still, she made her parents deny it to family and friends who called for the scoop.
“Some blog picked it up and-and and broke the news, and we still had to deny it,” Bayer added.
Bayer interned for “Sesame Street” and “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” while in college before moving to Chicago and joining the touring cast of “The Second City.”
She auditioned for an SNL showcase in Chicago and joined the cast in 2010 before being promoted to a repertory cast member in 2012.
The comedian was nominated for a Primetime Emmy in 2017.
Some of her top impressions included Jacob the Bar Mitzvah Boy and Rachel from “Friends.”
She left the show in 2017 but continued her acting career and appeared in episodes of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” the “Will & Grace” reboot and starred in the series “I Love That for You.”
