The Bear star Abby Elliott reveals feeling “the worst” after getting fired from SNL

The Bear character Natalie "Sugar" Berzatto has a lot of experience when it comes to things not working out in her favour. However, Abby Elliott, who plays Natalie, did not have that experience on hand as she watched her worst fears come true when she was fired from Saturday Night Live (SNL).

Even though getting fired from the job that was akin to a family heirloom — she was the third generation in comedy royalty — was the worst thing she could imagine at the time, Elliott has found her footing on the FX kitchen dramedy, reconnecting with her comedy roots.

In a recent conversation with The Independent, Elliott talks about this incident in detail. Here's what she revealed.

The Bear star Abby Elliott talks about the time she was fired from SNL

Abby Elliott, who plays Natalie Sugar Berzatto on the FX show The Bear, was the third generation in her family to join SNL as a comedian. Her father, Chris Elliott (Schitt's Creek, Groundhog Day), was a regular at the David Letterman show, and her grandfather was Bob Elliott of the comedy duo Bob and Ray. So, comedy is in Elliott's blood.

She dropped out of college to pursue comedy and went on to become the youngest member of the Saturday Night Live cast in 2008. Her specialty was impersonating A-listers, so she did everything from an elegant Meryl Streep to a pouty Angelina Jolie. It was a dream come true for the Golden Globe nominee to carry on her family legacy.

However, as life and the entertainment industry go, soon the anxiety of not being good enough started creeping in when her sketches wouldn't air for a few weeks at a time:

"Every week was a new week, and your happiness would depend on whether you got something on air or not, and if three weeks went by without a sketch, you’d think, ‘Uh-oh, am I going to be fired?’. There was always that looming threat of getting fired. That was the worst that could happen. And then, I kind of did," Elliott said.

After working on SNL for a while, The Bear star reveals that she asked the producer and creator, Lorne Michaels, if she could quit, and even though she got cold feet and went back to him, asking for her job back, he declined, and turns out it was for her own good. She added:

"As much as I enjoyed being on that show, sketch comedy wasn’t going to be it for me. It’s not why I started and it’s not how I wanted to end. Also, I had learnt the lessons I was going to learn... and so I left and, you know, the water was warm."

Good thing she did, because if she hadn't, we wouldn't be witnessing her iconic character on The Bear, or other roles in Indebted, How I Met Your Mother, and Odd Mom Out.

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