Conan O’Brien Says Adam Sandler Saved ‘SNL’ From Feeling Like ‘Life or Death’ and Brought Fun Back: ‘This Is a Possibility? You Can Like’ Working Here?

Conan O’Brien told fellow “Saturday Night Live” alum Andy Samberg during a chat on the “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast that Adam Sandler more or less saved the NBC sketch comedy series from sinking into behind-the-scenes despair in the early 1990s. O’Brien was a writer on “SNL” from 1998 to 1991. Sandler joined as a cast member in 1991 and stayed on the show through 1995.

“I was in that state of mind, and I think, you know, [Robert] Smigel and [Bob] Odenkirk and Greg Daniels were like, ‘It’s life or death,’” O’Brien said (via Entertainment Weekly). “And it feels like that’s kind of how everyone feels.”

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But Sandler’s vibe was notably different. “He was like, ‘This is so much fun to be at ‘SNL. Oh, I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it. Yippee!’” O’Brien remembered. “And he had that, ‘I’m going to do Opera Man. I’m going to do this. I’m going to do that. This is great, guys!’ I was like, ‘This is a possibility? You can like this?’”

O’Brien admitted last year that he regretted how intense he was during his “SNL” days. It seems like Sandler did not have this problem.

“I was way too intense, and I think I robbed myself of some fun that I could have had,” O’Brien said at the time. “I did have a lot of fun, but I think I could have had more fun. And I think I could have maybe written there a little longer if I didn’t make it such a grind for myself.”

“I burnt out. I burnt out. And [Lorne Michaels] could not have been nicer,” O’Brien added about his “SNL” experience. “This was a couple years before he contacted me about the late night show. But I was burnt out and I was like, ‘I’ve got to go,’ and that’s when I went to ‘The Simpsons.’”

Odenkirk, a writer on the show from 1987 to 1991, shared similar thoughts as O’Brien during an interview with EW earlier this moth, saying: “I was too hard on the show. 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.”

Watch O’Brien and Samberg’s full podcast episode in the video below.