Kristen Wiig Had a ‘Breakdown’ During Her Third ‘SNL’ Season

Starring on Saturday Night Live isn’t necessarily all that glamorous.

SNL alum Kristen Wiig appeared on the Jan. 21 episode of Las Culturistas, hosted by fellow SNL alum Bowen Yang and comedian Matt Rogers, and opened up about her tenure on the comedy series. Wiig appeared on the show from 2005 to 2012 and was one of the show’s breakout stars. She also earned four Emmy nominations for her performance.

But the 52-year-old called her time on the show “career-wise, like best years of my life.” She said being around her SNL costars felt like “living with them” for seven years. 

Her time on the show also taught her to feel okay “to fail” which is “hard to do.” She said she often wrote sketches that she knew would bomb at the table read, but that it was “okay” because “everyone’s got things that don’t work.” 

“And you realize, like, oh, that’s just part of figuring out what will get on or what is funny,” she said.

She told Rogers and Yang that she hit a particularly brutal wall during her third year on the comedy series. Yang, 35, said that when Wigg joined, “You were the cast member to come in fully formed, fully realized with the point of view already.”

“I mean, I don’t feel that way,” she said. She remembered that she auditioned for SNL twice, and the second time she did, she thought, “I literally did every character that I have,” and didn’t know what else to do.

Once she did get cast, “Three seasons in, [I was] having a breakdown being like, ‘I’ve done every voice. I have nothing.’ ” Yang said he felt similar in his second season, when he realized all the bits he’d done in his audition, he’d now done on the show. 

“That’s how you feel,” Wiig confirmed. To get through her “breakdown,” she leaned on his castmates. “And then that’s that hump you get over with also the help of other people being like, ‘Can you play blah blah blah?’ And you’re like, ‘Well, we’ll see.’ And then you end up trying or doing it. It doesn’t always work. And then you just like find new things.” 

Wiig said that early in career, she usually found characters by doing their voice first, but in her third season she found new ways. “It became like physical.”

The Palm Royale star remembered that once she was standing in someone’s office and said, “ ‘Let’s just do something that someone stands like this,’ because I was like, ‘I’m out of things to do.’ ”

That inventive standing led to one of her most iconic sketches — a woman who declares over and over, “Don’t make me sing.”

Yang and Rogers brought up another of their favorite Wiig bits, a “flirting expert” named Rebecca LaRue who terrorized Seth Meyers during “Weekend Update.” Yang said that he watched the dress rehearsal for the bit, and it flopped, but it worked during the show. 

“It’s probably because it didn’t play. I was like, ‘I’m gonna go for it,’ ” Wiig said. 

Yang also said that the biggest advice Wiig gave to him was, “Don’t read like the reviews and the comments and the feedback.” She said that the bad ones “go through a certain synapse” and stay with you forever, and the good feedback goes away. 

Since her departure as a cast member, Wiig has hosted SNL five times, most recently in 2024.