While Saturday Night Live is a dream job, and the sketch comedy show has made many stars over the last five decades, it’s not an easy gig by any means. The cast and crew don’t shy away from that fact either (during the 50th anniversary, Andy Samberg even performed a song called “Anxiety”). Now, Cecily Strong has opened up about the side effects that come after working on SNL, and I have to say, they sound brutal.
Cecily Strong left SNL halfway through Season 48 in 2022 after ten seasons on the show. Now, it’s been four years since her departure; however, the series is still impacting her life. For example, she has not recovered from Saturday Night Live’s weird hours, and told Us Weekly how her sleep schedule is doing these days:
I’m still learning life post-SNL. I’m still learning to sleep again, even though now I have a baby.
There are countless stories about the infamous writing nights at SNL that would see writers and cast members pulling all-nighters to get their sketches in. Then, obviously, the show airs live at 11:30 p.m. ET on Saturday night. So, the performers have to stay up to do the episode, and then after that, there is typically an after-party. I’ve always felt like they operate with a “I'll sleep when I'm dead” mentality.
Once they leave, however, they can go back to a regular sleep schedule. But it sounds like Strong has not. As she said, she has a baby, so they will wreck someone’s sleep too, although it is wild that four years after leaving SNL, she’s still re-learning how to sleep.
That’s not the only side effect. Strong also got candid about the anxiety she still feels whenever she enters 30 Rock. While she doesn’t have to deal with the fact that “the show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11:30” anymore, the stress of it all has not disappeared:
I start to feel it even walking into the building. [I’ve] not totally escaped being anxiety-free, but not having anything on the line, it’s like ‘I’m gonna have a good night no matter what,’ because there were plenty of times where I did not have a good night, which is part of the thing too.
Over the years, many performers have been open about how stressful SNL is. Bill Hader had really bad anxiety during his time on the show, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus once said she “spent a lot of time happily being miserable” while working there. So, it’s not surprising that Strong still feels that pang of nerves when she returns to 30 Rock and Studio 8H.
Now, I hope Cecily Strong can eventually get back on a normal sleep schedule and to a place where she can enter 30 Rock without feeling the stress of her time on Saturday Night Live. However, she also made it clear that she’s always happy to return, because it is “a second home to her.”
So, with all that said, if you’d like to see her legendary run on the sketch comedy show, you can stream SNL with a Peacock subscription. Then, make sure to keep an eye on the 2026 TV schedule, because SNL will be back this fall, and I assume more BTS stories will come with it too.
