The exiting 'Saturday Night Live' cast member says she would have stayed on 'Saturday Night Live' had it not been for 'Mulaney'.
- Jul 21, 2014
AceShowbiz - Nasim Pedrad addressed her departure from "Saturday Night Live" at the Television Critics Association summer press tour. Attending the event to promote her new show "Mulaney", she explained why she left the NBC variety series for the upcoming FOX comedy.
"Obviously there's nothing like that show and I was lucky to be there for five years," she initially said of "SNL" where she was a cast member for five seasons. "At some point you have to leave, and I can't think of a better reason to leave than for this particular show and this particular cast."
She added that "had it not been for this show," she would have stayed on "SNL." "Look, at the end of the day, these are two shows filming at the same time on opposite coasts. It wouldn't have been practical to stay there," she explained. "I don't think it's that common to get this kind of group together, and having experienced working with John [Mulaney] at 'SNL', I couldn't be more confident in his ability to write and star in a sitcom like this, truly."
John Mulaney, who is a former writer on "SNL", also talked about his own exit. "I loved it at 'SNL', but I wanted to make a move to do something else," he said. "I just remember thinking to myself, the type of show I want to do is the type of show that I grew up on," he continued, referring to classic multi-camera sitcoms filmed in front of a live studio audience.
"[I thought] it would be really cool to try to do one with my sense of humor," he said. "Just an updated version of that old-school sitcom with maybe a weirder bent to it, and I hope I accomplished that."
Responding to question about the similarities between his show and "Seinfeld", Mulaney jokingly replied, "Just watched 'Seinfeld' and copied it. They run it all the time, so it was easy."
"Mulaney", loosely based on his life as a standup comedian, is scheduled to debut Sunday, October 5 at 9:30 P.M. on FOX. John Mulaney and Nasim Pedrad are joined by Martin Short, Seaton Smith, Zack Pearlman and Elliott Gould in the cast ensemble.
