SNL 50th Anniversary Photo Shoot Maybe Wasn’t as Fun as You’d Think

When more than 60 SNL cast members get together for a photo shoot celebrating 50 years of Saturday Night Live, you might expect pure laughter. But that wasn't necessarily the case, Seth Meyers and Andy Samberg explained on the latest episode of their podcast.

For New York Magazine's annual "Reasons to Love New York" issue, the magazine assembled past and current cast members — as well as members of the SNL Five-Timers Club, including Steve Martin, John Mulaney, Christopher Walken and Candice Bergen — for a series of portraits with photographer David LaChappelle.

They gathered in groups over the multi-day shoot, and there were so many participants that New York Magazine did the "the first five-panel fold-out cover in the magazine’s history," the magazine explained on Instagram.

Andy Samberg and Seth Meyers Share Details of SNL 50th Anniversary Photo Shoot

So everyone must have had an amazing time, right? Yes and no. Samberg described the "whole spread as kind of a fun fever dream." But Meyers had a more muted take.

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"I saw Steve Martin afterwards, and he said, 'If you told people who was in that photo, they would all say, I bet it was so much fun. And it wasn't even a little bit fun.' And that's really the true thing," Meyers said.

He added: "Everybody's both in their head about they don't want to have a bad picture, but also they're around people that they want to be funny around. It was not fun. It was stressful."

Of course, he did have at least a little fun — he noted that he didn't love his photo because he's looking off-camera, but that the reason he's looking away is "I got caught laughing at somebody off camera."

Samberg reported, meanwhile, that he had "a nice easy time."

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"I was clumped with Billy Crystal and Laraine Newman, both of whom had so much chill it really put me at ease," Samberg said. "And we just kind of gently chatted through the chaos and didn't do anything crazy, pose-wise. And you know, it was good to see people. It was very nice to see people."

As listeners of The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast know, Meyers and Samberg — and their co-hosts, the Lonely Island's Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone — have a tendency toward self-deprecation and finding the most humbling, relatable moments in situations that the average person might consider wildly fun and awesome. So take the talk of stress with a grain of salt.

And of course, SNL always involves a chaotic mix of fun and stress that can often produce great comedy. It is, after all, a live show that involves a six-day workweek, from fall to late spring of every year, for 50 years, with a rotating host, among other complications.

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The photo shoot was also a blend of fun and chaos.

"I will say the other thing that was really fun: I was standing next to Tina [Fey] and Julia Louis Dreyfus, and David LaChapelle... it's not surprising that he likes to blast music at his photo shoots. At one point they were both screaming, 'None of us can hear you!' And it was just really fun to watch those two sort of take charge.

Meyers also joked about the idea that the assembled SNL vets needed music to have fun, adding, "We're also just less fun than I'm sure David LaChapelle thought."

Meyers added: "I'm sure people were saying to him, like, 'Oh my God, was it so funny?' And I'm sure he's like, 'No.'"

"Also, they're like blasting, We are family,'" Samberg said, singing the upbeat Sister Sledge song. "And everyone in there is like, 'We're the most cynical, dead inside people on the planet.'"

Main image: Seth Meyers at the Late Night with Seth Meyers FYC event, at the Television Academy on May 17, 2019 in North Hollywood, California. Shutterstock.