Andy Samberg Opens Up About ‘Difficult’ Decision to Leave ‘SNL’: ‘I Was Falling Apart in My Life’

Andy Samberg opened up about his “difficult” decision to depart Saturday Night Live in 2012 in a new interview with Kevin Hart.

During his appearance on Peacock’s Hart to Heart, the former SNL Digital Short maestro and “Dick in a Box” singer said of his exit after seven seasons, “It was a big choice. For me, it was like, I can’t actually endure it anymore. But I didn’t want to leave. Physically and emotionally, like I was falling apart in my life.”

He continued, “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. 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 [and] Thursday night, don’t sleep, get up, shoot Friday, edit all night Friday night and into Saturday, so it’s basically like four days a week you’re not sleeping, for seven years. So I just kinda fell apart physically.”

Samberg first considered leaving shortly after his Lonely Island cohorts Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone — who both served as writers on SNL — left the show in 2010. Samberg remained for another few seasons before the pressures of the weekly show — as well as his burgeoning movie career — wore him down again.

After consulting with former cast mates like Amy Poehler, Samberg relayed his desire to leave SNL to producers, who insisted that he remain.

“They told me straight up, ‘We prefer you would stay,’ and I was like, oh, that makes it harder,” Samberg said. “But I just was like, I think 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.”

A year after his SNL exit, Samberg starred in the sitcom Brooklyn 99 and reunited with the Lonely Island for both The Wack Album and their feature-length satire Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping.