Andy Samberg says he's 're-inheriting the stress' of being on “SNL” again: 'You're always at risk'

The master of the comedy program's digital shorts is still readjusting to being back on season 50's live sketches.

Andy Samberg's career soared after he was cast on Saturday Night Live, but now that he's back as a guest player on season 50, he's remembering the stress that comes with it.

"It's been fun, I gotta say. It's been really fun going back," Samberg said on a recent episode of The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast. "But again, also inheriting, re-inheriting the stress of it and being like, 'Oh, right, this is intense,'" is also a major part of the experience.

Samberg was tapped alongside fellow SNL vetsMaya Rudolph and Dana Carvey to return for season 50 for the express purpose of satirizing one of the major players in the 2024 presidential race. He's appeared as potential future first husband Doug Emhoff opposite Rudolph's Kamala Harris numerous times already, but reflected on a much wackier, riskier gambit from Oct. 19's episode hosted by Michael Keaton.

"That last show, I was like, if this Beetlejuice thing doesn't work, I'm just going to be here and not do anything. That puts you right back in the feeling of being a cast member — of, you're always at risk," he said.

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Keaton was joined during his monologue by two Beetlejuices, Samberg and current cast member Mikey Day, who needled him to "do the voice." Samberg told Keaton in his raspiest Beetlejuice drawl, "Mike here's the thing, I used to work here, and during my storied tenure I tried and failed many times to get my BJ into the show."

"Hey, don't you normally play Doug Emhoff in the cold opens?" Keaton asked. "Yeah the writers couldn't jam him in," Samberg replied in his regular voice, before cranking it to an 11 on the BJ scale, "so here we find ourselves!"

Samberg's tenure on SNL is somewhat unusual, as it was marked by a far higher concentration of digital shorts with his musical comedy group, The Lonely Island, than live sketches, something he joked about in his 2014 hosting appearance on the show: "I was a cast member here on SNL, where I appeared in upwards of 100 digital shorts, and six live sketches! So this is going to go great."

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Being thrust back into the harsh glare of studio 8H's floodlights is definitely a change of pace from the TV series (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) and films (Palm Springs, Lee) he's concentrated on post-SNL. But this time, he does admit, "it's a little more mellow. Me and Maya have been talking about it. It's a little more mellow because we know why we're there specifically."

Samberg, who spent seven season on the cast, recently opened up about leaving SNL in 2012 due to the toll it took on his mental and physical health. "Physically and emotionally, like I was falling apart in my life," Samberg confessed on a July episode of Kevin Hart's Peacock interview series Hart to Heart.

He elaborated, "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."

After some time away, Samberg reflected that he still looks back on the experience fondly. "It sounds very corny and rehearsed, but I'm just always like I still can't believe I get to do comedy for a living," Samberg told Hart. "It's all I wanted to do. I got to be on SNL. It went way better than I expected."

New episodes of Saturday Night Live season 50 air Saturdays at 11:30 p.m. ET/8:30 p.m. PT on NBC and Peacock.