Comedian Kate McKinnon revealed how hard it was for her to leave “Saturday Night Live” with some tears on Vulture’s “Good One” podcast.
“I definitely was not sure when the right time to go was,” she said when asked why she stayed with the show for as long as she did. “Leaving was in the back of my mind for a while, because it’s just a grueling schedule. I mean, I could do it for the rest of my life, happily, if the schedule were not so grueling and if I was not naturally a person who liked to wake up at 8 a.m. and go to bed at midnight.”
McKinnon performed on “SNL” for 11 seasons with nine straight Emmy nominations and two wins. She is one of the five longest-tenured cast members of the sketch comedy show.
“Part of it was the pandemic and how strange production had become, and wanting to wait until it was normal again,” she continued. “And mostly I hate change and I hate goodbyes and I love those people. Sorry, I’m going to start crying…”
Earlier this summer in an appearance on “Live With Kelly and Ryan,” the comedian detailed how she noticed the toll the schedule was taking on her body, saying, “I can’t keep on doing this.”
“I was having trouble staying up until 1 a.m.,” she said. “And I was like ‘OK. I have to go. As scared as I am and as sad as I am, it’s time.’”
When asked about her experience telling Lorne that she was done, McKinnon paused again, getting emotional.
“Telling Lorne was really hard. He knew it was coming. He was very sweet. But he has been a father figure to me, and so much more,” she said. “It was just really hard — simple human emotions, not wanting to say goodbye to something you love. This is fresh. It only happened two months ago.”
Discussing her goodbye sketch also brought McKinnon to tears.
“I did want a moment of catharsis of trying to encapsulate what the whole thing had meant to me and telling that to the audience. A while ago, Streeter [Seidell] and Mikey [Day] had floated the idea of me getting in a spaceship at the end, and I thought that was beautiful,” she said. “I had one other idea where I would play my barfly character, Sheila Sovage, and make out, individually, with every one of my colleagues. But due to COVID restrictions and due to the other idea being such a beautiful idea, we went with that. So I didn’t get to make out with everyone, which is a bother, but maybe one day. “
“I anticipated it being this moment of absolute release, and it was, in a way,” she continued. “But it certainly was not the most meaningful moment of the whole thing…. Jesus Christ, Kate, come on, get it together. It was not the most meaningful moment of the decade in the way that I thought it might be. The most meaningful moments, just looking back, were like … [Cries.] Okay. Long pause for crying, sorry.”
She did eventually pull herself together to detail the most meaningful moments in her time on the show.
“The most meaningful moments were moments when, like on a Friday night at rehearsal, I decided to stop and look around at the people who I loved so much and just make a memory of it. Nothing special — we were all just sitting around, and Mikey was doing a bit or Alex [Moffat] was doing a bit, and we were catching up and just looking around at the crew. Those are the moments that meant the most.”
