Abby Elliott reflects on Saturday Night Live departure: 'The worst that could happen'
The Bear star joined the comedy show in 2008, becoming its youngest ever female cast member at the age of 21, and she admitted there was a lot of pressure to write successful sketches, with the "looming threat" of being dropped constantly in her mind.
She told the Independent: 'Every week was a new week, and your happiness would depend on whether you got something on air or not, and if three weeks went by without a sketch, you'd think, 'Uh-oh, am I going to be fired?'
'There was always that looming threat of getting fired. That was the worst that could happen. And then, I kind of did.'
Abby had initially asked creator Lorne Michaels if she could leave in 2012 but then changed her mind - only for him to say no.
She said: 'I went back to him with my tail between my legs asking to stay, but after that season, Lorne said, 'No, I'm going to cut you loose.' "
But ultimately, Abby - who was best known on the show for her impressions of the likes of Angelina Jolie, Drew Barrymore and Meryl Streep - knew the comedy of SNL wasn't all she wanted to do with her career.
She said: 'As much as I enjoyed being on that show, sketch comedy wasn't going to be it for me. It's not why I started and it's not how I wanted to end. Also, I had learnt the lessons I was going to learn... and so I left and, you know, the water was warm.'
After roles in the likes of How I Met Your Mother, Odd Mom Out, and Indebted, Abby thought sitcoms would be where her career path led, so she was thrilled to receive an audition notice to play Natalie in The Bear.
She said: "It was so unique. I thought, 'Oh my God, this is so cool. This is so different.''
Loving the fact Natalie was multi-dimensional, she noted: 'I've played characters before where you're just the person who sets up the joke, and then the guy comes in and has the punchline.'
However, the 38-year-old actress had to fight her natural instinct to play Natalie like a comedian with a lot of jokes in the highly-improvised dialogue.
She said: 'My first day on set, it was very clear to me that I had to play her as natural and as real as possible."
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