‘SNL’ alum Anthony Michael Hall remembers ‘pressure to be funny’ on show’s ‘weird year’

Anthony Michael Hall says it was “a trip” starring on the so-called weird year of Saturday Night Live. when he was 17.

He was cast on the Lorne Michaels-created sketch comedy show in its 11th season, just as Michaels was returning to it after having spent five years away.

Hall, just coming off the 1985 movies The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles, was one of several new cast members, including his close friend, future Iron Man star Robert Downey Jr. Everyone was watching to see if the show would survive.

“I think there was a lot of trepidation,” Hall told Entertainment Tonight in a new interview. “Not just from Lorne, but also from the network to see if this would go on. So I think it was on shaky legs itself, the show. So it was challenging.”

He cited the “pressure to be funny” in the chaotic environment of Studio 8H.

“You’re dealing with so much,” the Brat Packer recalled. “You have a live audience there; it’s like rock and roll, theater, stand-up. It’s like everything rolled in one, and I’m just amazed to this day.”

Working on the show is “a grind,” Hall noted. “You come in on a Monday and we’re working long days, rehearsing around the clock from Thursday to Friday. And then Saturday we do the show twice, so it really is intensive.”

The National Lampoon’s Vacation star, who left the show at end of the season, said he has “such respect for all the people that come through that system, all the men and women.”

Many of those people, including Hall, were on hand to toast the show’s big 50th anniversary at the celebration that aired in February.

“I’m proud to be a part of it. It was like an out-of-body experience,” Hall said of being on the show in the fourth part of the Peacock docuseries SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night.

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly‘s free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

Decades later, Hall remains the show’s youngest cast member.

“When I look back I have some memories of it being difficult, I think, for a lot of the writers to figure out how to write for this kid,” Hall said in the doc. “I think it was a big challenge.”