How Kate McKinnon Feels About Breaking Character on SNL

Laughter really is the best medicine. 

While Saturday Night Live has a long history of its stars breaking character during sketches, Kate McKinnon recently shared she thinks the instances where she couldn’t contain her laughter was her biggest faux pas during her decade on the show. “I felt ashamed, because we’re not supposed to, and there’s something unprofessional about it,” McKinnon told Vulture‘s Good Ones podcast Aug. 11. “And yet sometimes it was just too fun.”

While McKinnon felt some guilt, it wasn’t enough to stop her from laughing as she also sees it as proof that she’s invested in her work. “There was a hint of wanting the audience to know like, ‘Oh, man, I love this. You have no idea how much I love Aidy Bryant and how much I love this job and how much I love these jokes,'” she explained. “So sometimes I would allow myself to just go there.”

And when McKinnon says she loved her time at SNL, she really means it. The Joe vs. Carole star even started crying while recounting the moment she told executive producer Lorne Michaels that she was leaving the show, saying, “It was really hard, and I really am not good at saying good-bye to stuff.”