Ex-‘SNL’ Cast Members Spill On ‘Really Hard’ Time Adjusting To Post-Show Careers

Johnson, in an interview with People magazine over the weekend, explained that the show puts “the pressure on you” and noted that you can’t leave “SNL” — which she described as a “different monster” and a “different beast” — and do the same things you did before.

“It’s very hard to understand a place like that,” Johnson said of “SNL,” where she spent four seasons before her exit last year.

“They just throw you in the water — you better know how to swim. They don’t give you no life jacket,” she added.

Johnson, who told the “Fly on the Wall” podcast that she left the show as she didn’t feel like she fit, said she had to figure out the difference between doing “something really great” and just going “through the motions” to determine what’s next for her career.

She credits her time on the show for building something “strong” inside her, adding that she feels she can take on anything in Hollywood as she “handled every piece of adversity that went on in that building.”

Troast, who was part of the Season 49 cast before producers asked her not to return for another season, told People that it was “really hard” to adjust after the show “fundamentally changed” her life.

“You don’t get a cushion when you fall,” said Troast, who credited her loved ones for their support after her “SNL” departure.

“Even before the show, they were the ones that were a guiding light, and so then that’s what I looked to after. And I feel like without that, I don’t know where I would be one year out, to be honest,” she said.

Their comments arrive after Season 50 cast member Devon Walker revealed why he called the show “toxic as hell” at times upon his exit this summer, telling Variety that cast members are “left hanging with big life decisions” as they’re not told for weeks whether they’re set to return.

Walker — who noted his exit was a mutual decision between him and “SNL” — said he’s nonetheless satisfied with his multiyear stint in Studio 8H, calling it “beyond a success.”