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Saturday nights on NBC are going to be missing a familiar face this fall as longtime Saturday Night Live vet Bobby Moynihan will no longer be starring on the late night comedy series. Earlier this year, Moynihan, who’s been a fixture on the show for nearly a decade, announced he’d be exiting the NBC staple to star in the CBS sitcom Me, Myself and I, leaving SNL, and especially Weekend Update, with a Bobby Moynihan-sized hole to fill.
Speaking with reporters after a panel for his upcoming series at the Television Critics Association press tour, Moynihan shared his thoughts on SNL’s unpredictable 2016-2017 campaign, which, thanks to unprecedented political upheaval caused by Donald Trump and frequent appearances by Alec Baldwin and Melissa McCarthy, went on to become the show’s most-watched season in 23 years.
“I felt like I was on one show for eight years and another show for one year,” Moynihan said. “It was a completely different machine last year.”
The frenetic political news cycle and daily headline creating actions of Trump led to unexpected last-minute rewrites, resulting in what Moynihan described as his “hardest year” on the show but also “weirdly, maybe, deep down” one of his favorites.
“You’d come in on Friday and they’d be like, ‘[Trump] did something nuts. We have to redo everything.'” he said. “There were times where they were rewriting cold opens or brand new cold opens on Saturday morning….It was a whole new ballgame.”
Referring to himself as an “unabashed fan of SNL“ who would have stayed there “forever and ever,” Moynihan admits he sometimes wishes he had SNL as an outlet, like recently when The Mooch was abruptly let loose.
“You go, ‘One of the only things I do is Italian,”‘ Moynihan said. “Of course, now, it happens.”
