Comedian Devon Walker has revealed his reasons for leaving Saturday Night Live after calling the show “toxic as hell.”
“To be frank, I guess the best way I put it is like me and the show kind of looked at each other, and we decided together that it was time to go our separate ways,” Walker told Ruling Stone. “I think I felt ready to leave the show, and I think the show felt ready to leave me. I was just ready to do something else. We both felt like it was time.”
Walker said that his job at SNL “was such a big time commitment and life commitment” that he missed out on a lot of “life stuff.”
“I felt ready to do a different version of my life,” he said.
The 34-year-old actor announced his departure via social media last week in an Instagram post that he captioned “me and baby broke up” with a red heart emoji. Among the photos he posted was a screenshot of a document titled “wait…did he quit or did he get fired?” where he described the working environment on SNL.
“Me and the show did three years together, and sometimes it was really cool. Sometimes it was toxic as hell,” he wrote. “But we did what we made the most of what it was, even amidst all of the dysfunction.”
In the Rolling Stone interview, the comedian also shared that he battled self-doubt during his time on the sketch comedy show.
“Self-doubt is part of any creative process,” Walker revealed. “I’d done sketch comedy one time before in my whole life, and then I auditioned for the show, then got on the most famous sketch comedy show in America, you know? There’s a natural doubt that comes with that, where you’re like, ‘Oh, I’ve never done this thing before. I hope I’m good at it.’”
Walker, who joined in 2022 for the show’s 48th season, said despite the hardships of working at the legacy comedy show, there were times when SNL felt like family, especially when working with close friends Gary Richardson and Alex English.
“To me, that really felt like family. You spend so much time together, we’re seeing each other way more than we’re seeing our families,” he said. “There are people there who, even if you didn’t know each other before, you forge a bond with.”
Now that he has left SNL, Walker revealed plans to star in films, acknowledging that the exposure he got from the show made people aware of him. Walker named hit shows like Industry, The Bear, and Severance as projects in need of Black voices.
“I’m trying to be on The Bear. If Lionel [Boyce] needs a brother, like, I’ve been Black and sad for years … Succession, there’s black stories to tell in that world,” he said.
“Come on now, let’s get involved,” he added. Let’s have a conversation. I’ve got time now.”
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