Andy Samberg Remembers His “SNL” Audition

I know when you audition for Saturday Night Live yeah you physically threw up I did throw up because because it's something you wanted so badly yes yeah and also like when you watch it for that long I mean it's similar to the experience I'm having right now where you've heard something for so long I've seen you for so long and then be in the room is very surreal yeah and it makes you tighten up in a sense doesn't it again because you wanted Saturday Night Live so badly but yeah to walk into that studio and you're like in now you're meeting Lauren and you've just heard Lauren's name 8 million times and then there is I then be like totally loose in art and I'm sure other comedians had said to you hey man when you go in there Lauren doesn't laugh that's that's the thing I always hear yeah and you have to sit there in the rooms cold yeah no there's no audience yeah you got us that there make this guy laugh we've seen everyone audition yeah I don't see how you can't throw up I mean well yeah but it was good I got it out of the way before I went in yeah and I heard when I was in there I did hear a little bit of laughter which was great I heard Tina Fey distinctively laughing remember what she laughed at cuz I thought you auditioned twice you know what I did an impression of Jimmy Fallon and she laughed at that is he is he hard to do Jimmy Fallon is that like you have to whip out your like you can't do short sonography is everybody does right you have to find something kind of obscure that no one else does I kind of happened into doing it because I'm not an impressions guy like primarily but the way that we got the audition at SNL was we were writing on the MTV Movie Awards for Jimmy Fallon this is a crazy story it's the best and he looked out for us really a lot we were doing sort of that we wrote the pre-tape stuff you know he does like put himself in Star Wars write himself in Batman and we wrote some of those and he recommended you to Lorne he did and it was because he heard me in the temp like of the video that when they wanted to show him to be like what do you think of this and I was doing his stuff so he recommended us to Lauren into the show so how do you get the job to write for Jimmy Fallon for the what was at the MTV Awards the MTV Movie Awards yeah and he did him twice and you guys write for him twice the second time you did it yeah we're up from Lindsay Lohan the first year how do you get my buddy Murray Miller my old dear friend from summer camp right this guy you've got good friends he's the best hook me up so many times he's the one who convinced me to apply to NYU he's the one who convinced me to move to LA so Fallon you got to be like freaking out that it's Fallon yeah because here's a Saturday Night Live guy yeah and he brought all the SNL writers and a couple of producers with him to help out you must have been in heaven we were pigs and [ __ ] were you nervous right because you know you twenty-five years I mean I remember 25 I sucked I mean I was is it the worst I'd be 25 is pretty young you get into a room with Saturday Night Live writers and Jimmy Fallon yeah but it went good I mean you kind of it's just like everything you sort of test the waters each phase and be like maybe this will work and then when people respond well you gives you more confidence yeah I could imagine that room being really tough it was all right though and you're you're working for Jimmy Fallon Jimmy Fallon thinks you're great he says to Lauren I know these three great guys now this is the amazing part to me yeah you're the guy who gets chosen to audition as a performer and your two buddies in what's the name of the company lonely the lonely island and the lonely island comes from your apartment right used to be yeah that because the traffic right all around it so your two buddies from high school say hey and we're gonna go in as writers and digital maybe do digital shorts and things like that you you feel inside how can you turn to your friends who you've been working with your whole life and you guys are in this together and suddenly you're being singled out to maybe be the guy on camera and they're not yes an awkwardness in that discussion yes I will say the thing that made it not as bad was that being on camera on SNL had been my vocal dream for as long as they had known me and it was decidedly not their dream right like we all loved SNL but Akiva really didn't have any interest in being on camera right especially not like live on SNL and Jorma had done a lot of theater and is hysterical but it wasn't like what he wanted to do was do sketch so when they say to you Andy you'll be auditioning to be a performer do you guys go off in a room and really talk about it and say look what do we do here well first they asked me to audition right that's the where you have to sit in front of lawn and do some of your standup all that and the three of us wrote my audition together I mean it's always been the team it's been really cool that way how long is the audition it's like five to eight minutes so you're not an impressionist but you do the Fallon thing you have to do other impressions just because that's the thing on Saturday Night Live yeah I had to come up with some who would you come up with um I did Alan Rickman in die hard what is he [ __ ] sound like I mean Rickman it was again it was all just sort of shitty bit so the whole impression was just McClane and if you do that Lorne laughs at that yeah you're in it was more for me the audition was less about concrete bits that I was just nailing and more about sort of the vibe you created a fund mod that was my hope but when you do Fallon do you have to come up with specific material you have you can't just go out there and just start riffing it was Jimmy Fallon at a funeral because Jimmy's such enough because of meat and so when you did it you had an audition again right yes now how soon after do you have to audition again it was like three weeks two or three weeks so when you heard you have to audition again do you sit there and lose complete confidence and say oh [ __ ] why didn't they put me through I've never heard of somebody going on and well this is actually pretty interesting for people who care about that's an L they told me they wanted they want you to come back again the network just wants to see you a second time and Lauren and all this but you can pretty much just do the same stuff you'll be fine okay I'll just redo it maybe I'll even do it a little better and then the day before it or two days before it I got tipped off like hey don't do all the same stuff right and I was like oh [ __ ] I have to write a whole new audition in two days because Lauren will think you don't have much behind you right yeah yeah also I don't know who told me to do the same stuff but that was bad advice that's an [ __ ] but somewhere I think tipped you off that it's the right thing to do to make new material I feel like it was maybe one of the producers that we knew from the movie Ward's okay but in in the back of my mind now I feel like maybe do that on purpose to see if you can respond under pressure right the show is written in a day or two that's right so what did you do what did you come up with for who two days before well the the thing that I came up with that never existed before that is the dumbest [ __ ] ever but apparently is what clinched be the show according the Lorne yeah is I was in New York and I had gone to a flea market and bought these really tiny like old seventies jogging shorts yeah and I was [ __ ] around with my friend Liz and doing a bit with her wearing the shorts and being like an out of breath jogger from the 80s and like all I would do is say I was out of breath oh my god so I'm so out of breath Gorbachev's really making things hard huh all he said was like 80s shitty eighties references then I threw that into the audition and had it nan who came up with that the three of you kind of dr. Taylor Dow and I just came up with like the night before man what pressure and I'm picturing those shorts and like your [ __ ] is outlined in them right and because they're so goddamn tight and they're pulled up I mean I could just imagine look ridiculous and the craziest thing is the second time I did it on the show Paul McCartney was on stage like five feet away from me how surreal was not it was the first time I had ever seen him and I like I walked out to do it being like this bit is so dumb oh hi Beatle

Channel: The Howard Stern Show

Views: 1,291,836

Rating: 4.913168 out of 5

Keywords: The Howard Stern Show, Howard Stern, Robin Quivers, Fred Norris, Gary Dell'Abate, Baba Booey, SiriusXM, HSS, htvod, Andy Samberg, Saturday Night Live, SNL, Audition, The Lonely Island, Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone, Interview, Radio, Lorne Michaels, Tina Fey

Id: 24eBNfn-4Fc

Length: 8min 15sec (495 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 21 2019