“Saturday Night Live” is not for the weak.
Kristen Wiig appeared on the “Las Culturistas” podcast last week and recalled having a “breakdown” during her third season on “SNL” after she ran out of good sketch ideas.
Host Bowen Yang, who just left the sketch comedy series after seven seasons, told Wiig 52, that when she joined the show in 2005 she was “the cast member to come in fully formed, fully realized with the point of view already.”
“I mean, I don’t feel that way,” Wiig, who left the NBC program in 2012, replied.
“I auditioned twice,” she recalled. “And I remember when they had me come back for the second one, I was like, ‘I did everything. I literally did every character that I have.’ Three seasons in, [I was] having a breakdown, being like, ‘I’ve done every voice. I have nothing.’”
The “Bridesmaids” actress continued, “And then that’s that hump you get over with also the help of other people being like, ‘Can you play blah blah blah?’ And you’re like, ‘Well, we’ll see.’ And then you end up trying or doing it. It doesn’t always work. And then you just like find new things. And then you find other ways to find characters. It became not just vocal — it became physical.”
Wiig became a breakout star during her seven-year tenure on “SNL,” earning four Emmy nominations for her performance.
She told Yang, 35, and his co-host Matt Rogers that starring on the show was “career-wise, like best years of my life” and taught her an important lesson.
“Feeling okay to fail was something that I had to… that’s hard to do,” she shared. “But having that read-through, writing something, and you’re like, ‘No one is gonna laugh at this. This is gonna be totally silent.’ But it’s okay, because you’re looking around that room at all these people and everyone’s got things that work, everyone’s got things that don’t. And you realize that’s just part of figuring out what will get on and what is funny.”
Wiig has hosted “SNL” five times since her exit from the series, making her a member of the prestigious “Five-Timers Club” alongside the likes of John Mulaney, Emma Stone, Paul Rudd and Scarlett Johansson.
She appeared in “SNL50: The Anniversary Special” last year, reprising her role as Dooneese, one of the Maharelle Sisters, in a sketch that also featured Johansson, Kim Kardashian and Ana Gasteyer.
