Ego Nwodim ‘Will Know’ When It’s Time to Leave Saturday Night Live

Ego Nwodim just wrapped up her sixth season with Saturday Night Live but she isn’t ready to start thinking about life beyond the sketch comedy series just yet. 

Nwodim and her castmate Heidi Gardner spoke with The Wrap about the viral success they have both recently been experiencing via SNL—which, for Gardner, includes the already-iconic Beavis and Butt-Head bit with Ryan Gosling and Mikey Day. Nwodim, meanwhile, has been delighting audiences with her spot-on impressions of Dionne Warwick, Katt Williams, Jada Pinkett Smith, and more plus her over-the-top characters like Rich Auntie With No Kids and Lisa from Temecula. 

Earlier this month, Nwodim told Vulture’s Good One podcast how her original iteration of Lisa bombed at dress rehearsal and almost didn’t make it to air. Fortunately, the table-shaking lawyer found an unexpected cheerleader in guest host Pedro Pascal, who insisted that the sketch be included in the final lineup. 

“I feel an immense amount of gratitude and love for [Pascal],” Nwodim noted. “I love him forever.” (Though she did tell The Wrap that the sketch has become “a bit formulaic” and that “if we were to do it again, we’d want to veer away from it and see where else we could place Lisa.”)

What won’t last forever, however, is Nwodim’s time on Saturday Night Live. But she isn’t about to start worrying about that—especially now that she’s being given the space to experiment with her craft.

“We’ve been, thankfully, in an amazing position to watch Kate [McKinnon], Aidy [Bryant], and Cecily [Strong] before us do what they do, because I was watching them at home before I got to the show and [was] so in awe of their work,” Nwodim told The Wrap. “For so long, they were the seniors and we were the juniors. Getting to now have the space in the cast to feel like we can play and we can be silly and we don’t just have to be of service in pieces and that we can take up more space and have our performances be all that we hope them to be, is really, really special.”

She also says she’s “trying to open myself more to where life is going to take me and enjoying whatever that is.”

As for when it will be time to hang up her 30 Rock employee badge? Nwodim is not putting any limitations on herself. “I feel like I will know when it’s time to go,” she says. “Even if it is scary to make that leap, part of what I’ve become accustomed to is the uncertainty, the question marks, and making bold choices. That time will make itself clear to me, and I’m in no rush to discern when that is or isn’t just yet.”

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