With a Wink and a Toke

Were you nervous at all leaving "Saturday Night Live"? The track record of people going on to have healthy long careers is spotty.

I wasn't because there isn't a track record for women so far. It's just unique to the performer and what they want to pursue. People say "whatever happened to blah-blah-blah?" But they aren't very aware. Some people can have a pretty vibrant life in the theater or they can have a voiceover career people don't know about. If it's not like the big-boy $20 million movie world, people seem to forget that there are a lot of other options in the arts. Besides that, I wasn't nervous about it. I was anxious to go on and grow and develop as an actor.

Also, just being on that show must take a real toll.

It definitely does. It's physically, emotionally exhausting, which is documented everywhere. More than that, depending on who you are, you come to a point where a three-to-five-minute container for my comedy or performing was starting to feel restrictive. To me it's logical that I jumped into theater, because I instantly dove into this situation where I can play one character over two-and-a-half-hour time every day for eight shows a week for a sustained period of time. You're kind of in suspended animation while you're on "SNL" because you're just generating a lot under pressure and in that context it's not always easy to garner new resources. You're pulling it off a lot.

You were even pregnant during your last season.

I was way pregnant my whole last season. She'll be 3 in June. So far she's a gypsy child. She has been everywhere and she is very open to the whole thing. She wears ruby slippers to sleep at night, so I thought it was a good sign.