Darrell Hammond says half the time he ended “Saturday Night Live” episodes thinking he'd disgraced himself

Hammond was a cast member on the show from 1995 to 2009.

Darrell Hammond had what most people would consider a successful run as a cast member on Saturday Night Live, on which he was known for doing impressions of former presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, Vice President Al Gore, and dozens of others. For 14 seasons, from 1995 to 2009, audiences knew where to see his comedy.

But it felt much different to him.

"Back when I was in SNL, it was a real up and down thing for me, because most of the time I left that show thinking that I — I'm going to say 50 percent of the time when I left that show — I thought I had disgraced myself," Hammond said on Monday's episode of the Amy & T.J. podcast hosted by Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes.

Hammond said he recently saw a photo of himself doing a read through with former costar Tracy Morgan, and it took him back.

"The memories sort of came flooding back how, how dissatisfied I was with what it was I was doing. And I think because of the degree of difficulty," he said. "I mean, you go to see a Vegas tribute act, someone doing an impression. It's brilliant, and we love them, but they've worked years on it. Now try doing it on Wednesday before a Saturday. Never done this before. Never done this one before."

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And there wasn't even time to prepare in those few days.

"You think you're gonna have 48 hours before Saturday, you're not," Hammond explained. "You might have 5 or 6 because there's a whole bunch of other things you gotta do. So taking that out there, there are times where my nerves would get so brittle. I'd say, 'Why am I doing this? Damn.'"

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Ultimately, he realized he had to keep subjecting himself to the stress, because he was "addicted to it."

Still, when Hammond left the show, he was the longest-running cast member. (Kenan Thompson now holds that honor.) And he's been back at the show full-time since 2019, though in a different capacity. He replaced the late Don Pardo as announcer.

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