Catherine O’Hara Confesses Why She Left ‘Saturday Night Live’ Cast After One Week

Schitt’s Creek actress Catherine O’Hara said she had to be loyal to the people that jump-started her career. Even though it meant she had to leave Saturday Night Live after just a week as a cast member.

O’Hara told People that she was cast the sixth season of SNL in the early 1980s, but quit after a week. “There’s been BS stories about I was supposedly scared by somebody,” said O’Hara, 69. The rumors suggested head writer Michael O’Donoghue was the culprit.

O’Hara claims that’s not true. Instead, she said she was loyal to the Canadian comedy sketch show SCTV, and that prompted her SNL exit.

“Our producer would get a deal with a network, and we’d have a show for a season or two, and then that deal would go away. There’d be a break, then we’d do the show again,” she said.

During one such break, “I got asked to be on Saturday Night Live. And of course I said yes. Who doesn’t want to do that?”

Then SCTV was picked up again, so she departed SNL without ever filming an episode. “Basically I said, ‘Oh, sorry, I gotta go be with my [comedy] family.’ ”

O’Hara admits she was wrong.

“Yeah, not cool to take a job and leave it. You know what I mean?” she says. But “It all worked out the way it was supposed to,” said O’Hara.