Taran Killam Wishes He’d Had a Proper ‘SNL’ Goodbye
Saturday Night Live's choice to cut longtime cast members Taran Killam and Jay Pharoah after Season 41 was a surprising one — and while Killam recently joked about his unexpected departure, he says he has but one regret.
"My gripe, if there's any — and I really don't have many — [is that] I'm a sentimental guy and I would have liked to have been given the chance to do some proper goodbyes and thank yous to all the people I worked with for six years," Killam told Entertainment Tonight.
Killam, who currently stars in the film Brother Nature with Bobby Moynihan and Gillian Jacobs, also says he won't necessarily miss the show's insane hours, in which writing sessions and rehearsals made it a round-the-clock commitment.
"I'm certainly at a place in my life professionally, and more importantly, personally, where I was ready to sort of retire from the chaotic schedule that is SNL," he admitted. Killam has two young children with his wife, How I Met Your Mother's Cobie Smulders.
Killam fashioned his own sign off on September 7, when he shared a brief satire of NFL-HBO series Hard Knocks about his SNL (forced) retirement.
So what's next for Taran Killam? In addition to Brother Nature, which he co-wrote with SNL writer and new Season 42 cast member Mikey Day, will make his directorial debut with 2017's Why We're Killing Gunther, starring Killam, Smulders, Moynihan, and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Gunther himself.
Relive one of Killam's iconic SNL moments — reenacting Robyn's "Call Your Girlfriend" video behind the scenes during one of their all-night writing sessions — below.
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