The Real-Life Diet of Will Forte, Who Is Thinking About Getting Into Blueberries

But then it all goes off the rails, because if there’s Jeni’s ice cream, that’s my favorite ice cream of all time. My wife always will keep us stocked up, and I can’t have less than a pint of it. I will eat the whole pint, or whatever’s left of a pint. It’s dangerous. I’ve had to make her stop getting it for me. As much willpower as I have in certain areas of my life, ice cream, I’m just powerless.

We had gotten home from, I think it was the premiere of The Four Seasons, and we got home and there was a full [Jeni’s] Gooey Butter Cake, but then there was a different kind of ice cream. I think it was maybe Ben & Jerry’s dirt cake, dirt pie, whatever. It’s just got a bunch of shaved chocolate things. That was kind of a three-quarters pint situation. I got to the end of that. I took down the three-quarters pint one, and then I was like, God, I just got to have one bite of the Gooey Butter Cake. Just one bite, right? What could go wrong here? Ate that whole pint. So it was a pint and three quarters. Then I was still hungry so I ate these Cheez-It puffs.

Cheez-It is actually doing really interesting stuff.

We had done a little drinking at the premiere, but that was probably my biggest ice cream day of all time. No regrets. Thank you.

I’m really a three square meals guy. When I will snack, it’s late at night, which is the worst time you can ever do it.

Oh, really?

But that’s kind of the beauty of the blueberries. Great late night snack, and they’re not terrible for you.

If I freeze some blueberries, somehow it gives me the sensation that it’s kind of an ice cream. That’s a good trick.

The SNL machine, we always hear about how it’s not exactly conducive to great health. You’re up late at night, the hours are crazy. What do you associate with that time? Was it like 2 a.m. takeout, cigarettes all the time, or were you on decent behavior?

That was an incredibly stressful situation. I was smoking for the first couple years of that, so that was really tough. On the real stressful days—the writing days, the Tuesdays where you did the bulk of the writing, and then on the Saturdays of the show—I would smoke quite a bit. The other days, wouldn’t smoke a lot. Then I started tapering off on the smoking, and I got on nicotine gum. About 18 years later, I’m still chewing nicotine gum. That’s not great, but it’s better than smoking.

But yeah, it was a stress machine. You learn to deal with it, and you figure out your systems that work for you. That system is different for everybody there. Everybody does it differently. Me, it was better to exhaust myself physically, better for my mental state of mind to suffer the exhaustion than to get more sleep and turn something in that I didn’t think was ready yet. I probably was among the people who stayed a little longer than most, or maybe the most.

You ever sleep in the building?

Toward the end, I did sleep on the couch, because I was just like, it’s going to be 20 minutes to go back home, 20 minutes to get back. At that point, every minute is counting. Every minute is a minute of sleep. Couch was good enough. I don’t know that I could go back and do that again. It is so grueling, that schedule. But man, is it fun while you’re doing it. It’s exhausting and it’s stressful, but also, there’s just nothing like it.

If I were to sacrifice sleep at this point in my life, I would go insane. Sleep and hydration, those are the two things that I’ve really come to prioritize.

I got to get better about hydration. I’m getting better and better, but I used to not drink any water. People always say, “If you’re tired, you’re probably just dehydrated. So don’t drink that coffee.” Then whenever I go like, “Yeah, but instead of getting this fifth coffee of the day, drink a water,” I feel like a million bucks. Why don’t I do this all the time?

Have you had any health scares or any wake up calls along the way that really forced you to get more serious about your health?

I’m trying to think…no!