Andy Samberg reveals reason he quit Saturday Night Live

Andy Samberg, better known as Jake Peralta from the hit TV show Brooklyn Nine-Nine, has opened up about his exit from Saturday Night Live 12 years ago. Samberg said on Kevin Hart‘s Peacock interview series “Hart to Heart” that the show took a massive toll on his physical health and that he doesn't think he got much sleep during those seven years.

“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 said.

Detailing the gruelling process to bring the show alive on TV, Samberg said, “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, all Thursday night, don’t sleep, get up, shoot Friday, edit all night Friday night and into Saturday."

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"So it’s basically like four days a week you’re not sleeping, for seven years. So I just kinda fell apart physically.”

He told Hart that he was also "falling apart in his life, and by 2012 couldn’t “endure it anymore.”

Andy Samberg on SNL

Samberg worked on SNL from 2005 to 2012 and was one of the biggest stars of the comedy show. The Brooklyn Nine-Nine star, along with Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone, made digital shorts one of SNL’s most viral segments. The actor says that once Schaffer and Taccone left the sketch comedy, he was the sole digital shorts creator.

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“I was basically left in charge of making the shorts, which I never pretended like I could do without them,” Samberg said.

However, Samberg was also hesitant to leave SNL since without it he would not have an instantaneous creative outlet. “The craziest thing about working there is once you get going, if you’re just in the shower and you have an idea that shit can be on television in three days, which is the most like intoxicating feeling," he said.

The producers told him "we prefer you would stay". But Samberg said, "to get back to a feeling of like mental and physical health, I have to do it. So I did it and it was a very difficult choice.”