Last winter, everyone from famous New York comedians to awkward teenagers watching in their parents’ basements was disappointed when Bill Hader was absent from the three-hour Saturday Night Live 50th anniversary special. At the time, a rep had told Variety that there was a scheduling conflict, but as it turns out, he was simply too anxious. In fact, as he told Seth Meyers last night, his anxiety is so intense that it leads to stress, which in turn led to a case of shingles. It does seem that the shingles came after SNL50, but the anxiety was very much present, so much so that he couldn’t even join a sketch ridiculing it.
“Andy called me and was like ‘Hey, so we’re doing this short about how everyone had anxiety so I’m calling you and duh duh duh duh.’ And when he told me about it, I was like, ‘I don’t know if I wanna do that.’ And he was like ‘Why?’ I’m like, ‘Because I’m anxious!'” Hader is referring to Andy Samberg’s “Anxiety” Digital Short; Bowen Yang ended up playing the character that Hader would have if he had indulged Samberg’s wishes. Hader says that Yang “was great.” “But that was true,” Hader says of the sketch, reminiscing about how much anxiety being on the live show would give him. “Yeah, I was like really shaky and everything.”
However, Hader goes on to recall Meyers and Amy Poehler being especially steeled when the showdid a series of primetime Weekend Update segments on Thursdays ahead of the 2008 presidential election. “You and Poehler were just like, ice in your veins,” he says. “I was like trembling, anxious. And you guys went out, I remember, and something went wrong, and you guys were like ‘Oh, something went wrong. Oh, something went wrong.’ And I was like, ‘You can just do that?!'”
Hader has been open about his intense anxiety in the past, telling The New Yorkerearlier this year how Lorne Michaels would get him on stage when he started to panic. “Calm the fuck down. Just have fun. Jesus Christ,” Michaels told him when Hader returned as a host, which is only reassuring when you know that he would tell other cast members, “Don’t fuck it up.” Hard to imagine why every person in this cast is so nervous all the time!
