Bill Hader has made history with the announcement of his Emmy nomination for Saturday Night Live—he’s the first male SNL cast member to receive a nomination since Eddie Murphy in 1983.
Hader was unaware of the honor, telling Arts Beat, “I didn’t know that. I was up early this morning, checked my email, looked at my phone. Had breakfast, took a shower and came out. No one was here, and there were tons of emails and texts. They were all from SNL people, so I thought, ‘Oh, did something bad happen?’ And Kristen [Wiig’s] was the first one I saw. She was the first person to text me: ‘Oh my God, congratulations!’ And then a bunch of writers. It was really moving.”
But despite Hader turning out impressive roles like Stefon and impersonations of James Carville and Rick Perry, the comedian doesn’t think he can take very much credit for his success. “I’m only as good as our ensemble is, and as good as our writers are,” he said. “You do that thing at the end of the year—‘Hey, do you want to submit your Emmy show?’ And I’m always like, ‘Ah, whatever you guys think is good.’ It’ll never happen. It’s like, ‘Hey, you want to submit yourself so you can take a space shuttle to Mars?’ No, you do it, because it’ll never happen. I told my wife I got nominated and she went, ‘For what?’ I was like, ‘For SNL!’ She was like, ‘Oh, really?’”
There has been much speculation about what will happen to the show next season, with Wiig and Andy Samberg not returning to the cast. “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Hader said. “When new people are hired, you probably find out before I do. On a personal level, Andy and Kristen not only were huge to the show—obviously—but they were the people I came in with, along with [Jason] Sudeikis. There’s a special bond you have with the person you came in with. Andy and I flew from LA to New York together to have our final meeting, and the whole time were, like, ‘This is so wild.’ We all became professionals at the same time. Our careers got a giant boost at the same time, and we went through the same learning curve. They mean a lot to me, so to have them gone, it’s a huge thing. But Kenan [Thompson] and Fred [Armisen] and all these people that I love are still there. All these great writers that we have are still going to be there, and we’ll get new cast members, and who knows? A new cast member could come in and pull a Lazy Sunday, and we suddenly go, ‘Whoa, that’s what we’re about now.”
The Emmy’s will air September 23.
