Bob Odenkirk: Ben Stiller Was ‘Ballsy as Hell’ to Exit ‘SNL’

Bob Odenkirk is praising Ben Stiller for sticking to his guns more than 35 years ago.

Odenkirk, who was a staff member of “Saturday Night Live” alongside Stiller for just one season, told The Hollywood Reporter that it was “ballsy as hell” of Stiller to exit the famed sketch series. Stiller was a writer and featured performer at age 23 before quitting the show in 1989.

“He was ballsy as hell to walk away from ‘SNL’ and to be able to say with confidence about himself and his career, ‘This isn’t going to work for me. I have to leave here,’” Odenkirk said.

Instead, Stiller landed his own eponymous MTV (and later Fox) series “The Ben Stiller Show,” which he also directed. Odenkirk was a writer on the satirical sketch series.

“He was very serious about it, solemn,” Odenkirk said of Stiller’s directing style at the time. “He was talking about the film stock you were using and the lenses and shit, and that was for fucking parodies for a silly sketch show on Fox.”

Of course, after now helming drama series like “Severance” and “Escape from Dannemora,” Stiller’s directing choices have found a different audience than his “Ben Stiller Show” roots. Odenkirk also added that he believes Stiller has adjusted his standards since.

“Whatever criticism anyone has of Ben, he knows it before they do,” Odenkirk said. “That’s a great thing, but a burden when you’re young and you haven’t dealt with any of it. But I think he has dealt with a lot. I think he’s a happier guy, and he’s easier in the world. It’s just hard to go through what we go through and make what we make with the standards that he has.”

Stiller, meanwhile, doesn’t think his career arc, namely leaving “SNL,” was that radical.

“I just knew that I wasn’t a great live performer,” Stiller said. “It got me nervous. I get stressed out even thinking about it, and making movies is the opposite of that. You get to do it over and over again.”

“SNL” is now celebrating half a century in 2025. And it’s not just Stiller who is reflecting on his time on the series in its 50th year: director Stiller’s “Severance” star Christopher Walken said that the now-iconic 2000 “more cowbell” sketch “ruined” his life, according to cast member Will Ferrell.

Ferrell recalled visiting Walken backstage during Martin McDonagh’s “A Behanding in Spokane” on Broadway in 2010.

“I went to see [Walken] backstage, and he’s like, ‘You know, you’ve ruined my life… every show, people bring cowbells for the curtain call and bang them,’” Ferrell said of the sketch in a clip from “SNL 50: Beyond Saturday Night,” now on Peacock. “’It’s quite disconcerting.’”

Walken has separately said of the sketch, “I don’t understand why it follows me around like it does…. It’s kind of run its course.”