Bob Odenkirk has found new respect for Saturday Night Live after leaving the show.
While discussing Nobody 2 at San Diego Comic-Con 2025, the actor tells Entertainment Weekly that he has gained a better perspective on SNL in the years since he finished his tenure as a writer, which lasted from 1987 to 1991. Although he’s previously said that he had a less-than-stellar view of SNL while he worked there, he now realizes that he judged the show too harshly.
“I was too hard on the show,” he says. “I had a lot of attitude when I got hired there, like, ‘This show could be better, this show could be Monty Python, this should be more cutting edge, this should be more dangerous.’ And I was frustrated by it not representing purely my point of view. I wanted it to be me, my show.”
Odenkirk now understands that his desire to personally transform the entire voice of SNL was foolhardy. “It’s not my show! It’s a show that is shared by everyone who’s in that cast, and everyone who’s in that writing staff, and it’s shared by generations, and not one generation,” he says.
He continues, “Everybody in America watches it, and it’s a reference point for everyone. I think the 50th just made me more aware [than] ever of the amazing work that’s been done there.”
The Better Call Saul star also thinks that he got to write boundary-pushing comedy on a later project. “I think Mr. Show, the show I did with David Cross, I consider my effort to do something edgy and new and try to blast through some barriers and go to another level,” he says.
Saturday Night Live/Youtube
Bob Odenkirk on ‘Saturday Night Live’
Odenkirk also admits that he didn’t fully appreciate how SNL‘s lightning-fast weekly schedule makes its production so difficult. “It’s a bigger challenge than I thought it was when I worked there,” he explains. “When I worked there I was 25, I was like, ‘C’mon, dammit! We can do better! This is easy!’ And it literally was the years since I’ve left that I went, ‘Wait a second, that show is almost impossible to do at all.'”
Additionally, when asked if he’d consider hosting the show during its upcoming 51st season, Odenkirk responds strongly in the affirmative. “I would love that opportunity,” he says. “I have mad respect for the effort of that show, and I would dream of being able to host.”
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Though he’s never hosted the show before, Odenkirk says that it remains within the realm of possibility. “There’s been conversation about it,” he explains. “They don’t have me locked out. I’m friends with everybody there, and I know so many of the writers, and I know so many of the actors. It’s just part of my life.”
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