Calling it “one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made,” Andy Samberg on Friday officially announced his decision to leave NBC’s Saturday Night Live after six seasons.
Acknowledging that the news was “not a huge shock” in the wake of two months’ worth of rumors, Samberg nonetheless told the New York Times, “It’s an incredibly emotional and strange moment in my life.”
During his SNL tenure, which began in the fall of 2005, Samberg shepherded the late-night series’ Digital Shorts segments, amassing a total of seven Emmy nominations along the way for Original Music and Lyrics. He, his partners in the Lonely Island hip-hop group and guest performer Justin Timberlake converted on the first of those nods, in 2007, for the extremely viral “D–k in a Box.”
Samberg’s formal farewell comes just weeks after the SNL season finale that marked castmate Kristin Wiig’s own exit from the series.
In an April a poll asking which rumored-to-be-leaving SNLer you’d miss most, Samberg placed second behind Wiig, ahead of Jason Sudeikis
