Zach Galifianakis details his 2 humiliating weeks as a Saturday Night Live writer

Whatever your story is for the worst/shortest job you’ve ever had, Zach Galifianakis’ is probably better. In a recent interview with Off Camera With Sam Jones, the actor revealed how he was hired on a trial basis as an SNL writer in 2000 and how his short-term tenure ended with an allegedly unfunny sketch he wrote for host and musical guest Britney Spears. Oddly, Galifianakis initially thought he’d landed a spot in the cast, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. “I didn’t get it. I thought I got it, but I got to New York and I realized quickly that I was writing,” he said.

For the Spears episode that aired on May 13, 2000, he wrote a sketch in which Will Ferrell was to be the bodyguard to her bellybutton, which at the time was often exposed. At the table read with the cast, the entire room fell absolutely silent while reading it. Zero laughs. “I remember it was so silent. I remember hearing the A.C. as it shut down in the middle of the sketch.” He was sitting next to Tina Fey, who was the head writer at the time, and he distinctly remembers how she patted his shoulder after that. “It didn’t feel sarcastic. It could’ve been, but in my mind, it was her going, ‘It’s okay.’”