Conan O’Brien recalls Tom Hanks sleeping 'like Christ' across “Saturday Night Live” writers room tables

Hanks learned the hard way that, as an "SNL" host, you really aren't expected or even encouraged to give everything.

Tom Hanks has perfected the art of hosting Saturday Night Live, but he went through plenty of trial and error to get there.

"I remember coming out once, and — I swear to God, I think it was maybe two in the morning," Conan O'Brien told Hanks when the actor appeared in a recent episode of the Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend podcast. Reminiscing on his four-year stint as an SNL writer, O'Brien continued, "Most hosts, they hang around a little bit. They sense the sadness, the desperation, they smell the odors, and they leave. Then they come back refreshed at the read-through."

But that's not what happened when O'Brien and Hanks first crossed paths in 1988.

"I came out, and there's this giant [table] in the conference room, and you were sitting there, and you had been working on your own idea," O'Brien said. "They had shoved all the tables together, and you were lying on the tables like Christ, with some pages over your eyes, because you were trying to catch a couple of winks before you woke up and got back to writing at three in the morning."

"I'd always heard that that was the great power of the hang," Hanks explained, "that you got there, and all night Monday, and all night Tuesday, you're going. Now they kinda take the host around, but I wanted to get in there and mix it up."

Hanks' hard work clearly paid off. He was inducted into the rarefied "five-timers club" of celebrities and public figures invited to host the sketch comedy program five times or more within just six years of his first time hosting. Hanks hosted SNL seven times between 1985 and 1996, and has since made it an even 10 with hosting stints in 2006, 2016, and 2020. He's only outranked by Buck Henry, John Goodman, Steve Martin, and Alec Baldwin, who's racked up a staggering 17 hosting credits.

To achieve SNL glory, however, Hanks had to step on a few toes.

Related: Conan O'Brien regrets being 'way too intense' while working at SNL: 'I robbed myself of some fun'

"Here's one thing I learned about maybe the third time I did the show," Hanks told O'Brien. "You're the host. You say, 'Hey, I have some ideas for some for some sketches,' and every writer goes, 'Well, that's just great. You have ideas that will rob us of the opportunity to get our ideas read. How wonderful.'"

Hanks appeared in some classic sketches in his early run as an SNL host, including "Girl Watchers," in which Hanks and Jon Lovitz face bitter, wordless rejection from beautiful passing women, and "Mr. Short Term Memory," in which Hanks plays a memory-lapsed San Bernardino doctor who causes mayhem wherever he goes. O'Brien either wrote or co-wrote each iteration of these sketches.

Eventually, Hanks explained, "you learn: You're the host. Concentrate on the monologue and then walk away. But it's a great hang, everybody's carrying on."

Related: Revisiting the brilliant Saturday Night Live Black Jeopardy sketch featuring Tom Hanks

O'Brien may have teased Hanks about his overeagerness, but he remembers Hanks' presence on the show fondly. He recalled that "the guy back in the day when I was working at SNL who was money in the bank and still is to this day was mister Tom Hanks. He would show up, caffeinated, ready to go, like, 'Hey! Hey, everybody. What have you got?'"

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