Punkie Johnson is opening up about the emotional toll of her four years as a cast member on Saturday Night Live.
The update came on the debut episode of the comic’s newly-launched Gay and Ghetto podcast, a short-form weekly show that promises to provide a window into Johnson’s “realest and wildest thoughts.”
“At SNL, you hit the ground running,” she explains on the podcast. “You get thrown into that water, no life jacket, no boat, no paddles, no goggles, no snorkel sh*t, no nothing… and it all just hit me after SNL. It hit me all at once.”
Johnson explains that she didn’t realize the mental toll the show had taken on her until last February.
“I knew something was off in that final half of the season,” she recalls. “It just clicked in my system. It was something that had never happened to me before in my life. I just woke up one morning and I had lost my drive. I had lost that hunger. I lost that greed and that need to perfect all my work. I had lost all desire to be in this business.”
“I felt like I was close to the edge,” she adds. “I guarantee if I had done another season at that job, I don’t think I would’ve made it to November. What I would have done, I have no idea, because you work your ass off at that job. It’s countless hours. It’s like six days a week, 21 days at a time, sometimes 28, and it just seems like whatever you do is not good enough.”
While Johnson goes on to note that the rejection experienced at the job was “torturing,” she adds,“I’m not about to sit up here and act like I didn’t have my faults at SNL. You know, it’s all politics,” she says. “A lot of things did happen in that building, but I’m not about to sit up here like I didn’t have opportunities. I don’t think I had a fair amount of opportunities, but I’ve had opportunities that I blew.
“Overall it was a mindf*ck being at that job,” she concludes.
Johnson has been laying low following her departure from SNL at the end of last season.
“If you’ve really been paying attention, I haven’t been posting anything on social media,” she tells listeners. “I did four years at SNL, and I literally just took six months off of my life. I cut off everything. I cut off everybody. I cut off social media. I cut off friends. I cut off outside. The only people that I really talked to, of course, was my immediate family.”
“I just needed to be in silence,” she explains. “I just needed to sit with my thoughts and process everything that had happened in my life in the last four and a half years.”
“My goal was not SNL,” she tells listeners. “That’s not a way of sh*tting on them or nothing, but it wasn’t my goal… I didn’t think I belonged in that building. But you know who did? Lorne Michaels. Mr. Michaels did for whatever reason, and I appreciate him for that.”
Johnson first announced her SNL exit at a comedy show last summer. In a subsequent interview with The Saturday Night Network, she described her departure as“a firing and a quitting at the same time,” but Johnson’s new podcast marks the first time she’s detailed the emotions and pressures she faced while at the show.
Johnson’s Gay and Ghetto podcast is available here. New episodes will drop every Monday.
