The 'Veep' actress reflects on her early fame when she was still on 'Saturday Night Live' and how challenging it was working on the NBC popular sketch show.
- August 6, 2023
AceShowbiz - Julia Louis-Dreyfus confesses working on "Saturday Night Live" wasn't what she expected it to be like. The 72-year-old actress-and-comedian shot to fame for her roles as various characters on the NBC late-night sketch show during her three-year stint between 1982 and 1985, but she has admitted it was a huge learning curve in her career and she found it so "challenging," it was like getting "masters and a PHD all at once."
"I was a young teenager watching the show, and feeling as if these were my people. And then when I got hired to do it, you can imagine my thrill, only to find that it wasn't anything like I thought it was going to be," she told Total Film.
"So it was a big wake-up call for me. It was incredibly challenging. But I learned a lot. In three years, it was like I got a masters and a PHD all at once; about show business, my priorities, doing live television, comedy. I came out of it with a better understanding of what it is that I wanted to do."
The decorated star - who has won countless Emmys and SAG Awards and earned a Golden Globe - is eager to get back to set to work on Marvel's "Thunderbolts", which is on pause amid the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike about concerns over wages for actors and creators in the industry, AI technology, and how the profits of digital streaming on services such as Netflix and Disney+ can be divided.
The SAG-AFTRA actors union strike over a lack of fair pay is also in full-swing.
The 62-year-old actress will star in the upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) blockbuster as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. She said, "Right now the 'Thunderbolts' film is shut down because of the writers' strike but I'm hopeful that these issues will be resolved, and then we can get back to work, because I was very much looking forward to doing this particular piece."
