Working on Saturday Night Live can be a dream come true for comedians, but getting a sketch onto the air is another story entirely.
Even some of the show’s most celebrated performers have experienced the particular heartbreak of watching material they worked on all week get cut. During a 2025 conversation with Variety, Mike Myers opened up about just how emotionally difficult that process could be, and revealed the surprising lesson that eventually changed his outlook.
The conversation also featured Colin Jost, Marcello Hernández and Sarah Sherman, who discussed the highs and lows of making SNL as part of the show’s 50th-anniversary celebrations.
Mike Myers Used to Go Into a ‘Depression’ When His Sketches Were Cut
For Myers, 63, the emotional roller coaster began at the show’s dress rehearsal.
Every week, SNL puts its sketches through a dress rehearsal before the live broadcast. The cast and writers may have dozens of pieces of material, but only a fraction ultimately make it into the finished episode.
Myers admitted that he found the process particularly difficult.
“I used to go into a depression when my sketch got cut,” he said during the Variety roundtable.
It wasn’t simply about losing a few minutes of television. For the writers and performers, a sketch can represent days of work, rewrites and rehearsals. And by the time it reaches dress rehearsal, everyone has become invested in seeing whether it works.
Current cast members Sherman, 33, and Hernández, 29, acknowledged that the process can still be emotional. Hernández compared the experience to sports, explaining that SNL‘s competitive nature can leave performers upset when something they’ve worked on doesn’t make the cut.
But Myers eventually learned not to take the cuts quite so personally.
Conan O’Brien Changed Mike Myers’ Perspective
The person who helped Myers develop a healthier attitude toward rejected material was another SNL alum: Conan O’Brien.
Myers recalled a week when O’Brien, 63, had worked with a particularly difficult host who had put him through a frustrating creative process. When O’Brien discovered that one of his sketches had been cut, however, his reaction surprised Myers.
Instead of being devastated, O’Brien essentially treated the rejection as proof that everything was going according to plan.
That moment made Myers realize that a sketch being cut didn’t have to mean the entire week had been a failure.
“He taught me how to say, ‘OK. It’s not the end of the world,'” Myers explained.
It was a lesson that stuck with him.
Myers, who was a cast member from 1989 to 1995 and later returned for SNL‘s 50th-anniversary festivities, also said he now appreciates the editing process differently. He even joked about enjoying cutting material when he returned to the show to portray Elon Musk.
“If you’ve got eight jokes, three of them are OK and the five of them are strong, let’s just go with the five!” he said.
For a show where performers have just minutes to make millions of viewers laugh, sometimes knowing what to leave out can be just as important as knowing what to keep.
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