Why did Will Ferrell leave ‘Saturday Night Live’?
Few figures in the history of Saturday Night Live were as beloved and successful as Will Ferrell. Able to find the inner man-child in just about every character he played, Ferrell was uniquely skilled to excel at SNL. He could play uppity straight men like Alex Trebek, off-the-wall goofballs like Harry Caray, and gaff-prone politicians like President George W. Bush. His original characters, from cheerleader Craig Buchanan to fake Blue Öyster Cult percussionist Gene Frenkle, were equally memorable as well.
However, no one can stay on SNL forever (unless they’re Kenan Thompson), and when Ferrell left the cast, he went on to a lucrative film career rivalled only by former cast members like Eddie Murphy and Bill Murray. But when Ferrell left, he was in a singular position of power: he played the President, he was able to write his own material, and he was the most recognisable name in the cast. So, why did he decide to leave?
“I could have stayed,” Ferrell revealed in the documentary SNL in the 2000s: Time and Again. “I could have kept doing it, but it just felt like the right time to go.” Amy Poehler explained the impact of Ferrell’s absence as overwhelming. “2001 was Will Ferrell’s last year, and when he was leaving, it was the first of many times since where you thought, ‘How is the show going to go on once this person leaves?'” Poehler said in the documentary.
Ferrell elaborated on his departure in the book Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live. “We can’t use the word ‘graduated’. I said that to Lorne once and he said, ‘I hate that word,'” Ferrel explained. “On my last night, the biggest overriding feeling really was that of it being very surreal. It was emotional at times and then strange in the sense that I had so much to do, and was moving around so much from sketch to sketch that it didn’t even really hit me until the very end.”
“And even then I tended to focus on how something played better at dress than it did on air, like I did every week,” Ferrell added about his last show. “It got to me more after the show; it was sort of a ‘retirement party meets wedding reception.’ There was a sense of accomplishment but a sense of I was glad it was over. I will miss most the obvious things – the personal relationships and the people… That seventeenth floor has the same feeling of living in a dorm, except that everybody is doing comedy, and I liked that feeling.”
However, when talking about the things he wouldn’t miss, Ferrell shed some light on why he decided to leave when he did. “What I’ll miss the least for sure is the crazy hours, especially Tuesday night. There really is no reason why we have to come in late on Tuesday and work late and write sketches until 7am. It’s a remnant of the coke days, I think. It was fun at first in a weird sort of way, but after seven years of doing it, you have to say, ‘Wait a minute – why do we do it in that way?'”
It didn’t take long for Ferrell to establish himself as a film star. Before he even left the show, Ferrell had logged memorable on-screen roles in films like Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and Zoolander. But in 2003, just one year after departing SNL, Ferrell starred in the films Old School and Elf, solidifying himself as one of the top comedic actors of his time.
