Writer Quit ‘SNL’ After Show Made Her Feel She Was ‘Back in Middle School’

Comedian Claire O’Kane was pretty pumped when she landed a writing job on Saturday Night Live. As a kid, she searched GeoCities sites for the inside dope on how comics like Chris Kattan landed on the show. In 2022, her childhood SNL dreams came true. “Once you get that job you’re like, Oh, this is it,” she told Marc Maron on the WTF podcast. “This is the goal.”

O’Kane joined the show midseason amidst warnings from pals who’d been on the other side. “I had been told by other people who had worked there before who are friends of mine, like, this job is hard,” she said. “Some people thought it sucked.”

But when she actually got the job? “I was like, You know what? I’m gonna embrace this. This is pretty insane that I get to do this.”

That enthusiasm didn’t last long. “Almost immediately, I was physically and mentally back in middle school,” she told Maron. “My palms started sweating for the first time in my life, my period stopped because I was so anxious. The first night, I’m in the office alone. I close my door and I’m sitting in front of my computer, and I’m like, ‘Okay. Ideas. Ideas.’ And all I can hear are people laughing with each other and running up and down the hall. And I immediately start crying.” 

This wasn’t like any other writing job, she concluded. “I have to make friends again. I have to prove myself.”

Maron guessed that O’Kane never quite got over the hump of that initial anxiety, but she was able to push through. “I learned a lot,” she told him. “Honestly, I wish I stayed longer because what I really want to do eventually is direct my own stuff. And you learn so much from working there, all the different aspects of making something. That’s the coolest part.”

So what drove O’Kane’s decision to leave? “I was having some personal problems,” she said. “I was drinking a little too much.” 

O’Kane talked about leaving the show in an appearance at a Cracked comedy show earlier this year. “I quit. They wanted me to come in on Saturdays and I go, ‘I don’t think so. I got stuff to eat,’’ she joked. “I didn’t quit because they didn’t take any of my ideas — which they didn’t — but I just didn’t like it. It didn’t work for me.” 

The punchlines don’t tell the whole story. After O’Kane worked through her initial anxiety, she told Maron that she found her groove and got sketch ideas on the air. So it really wasn’t Saturday Night Live, Maron concluded, it was just O’Kane dealing with mental health issues?

Well, it was Saturday Night Live as well. “I’m being a little diplomatic,” she confessed. But despite some guilt and shame associated with leaving the job, “it was important. I needed to leave in order to fix my life. I’m in a much better place. I think if I were to work at SNL now, I could deal with it and enjoy it.”