I would be in kind of a panic at 3 or 4 a.m. A lot of times, it would be a Tuesday night, which is a writing night there. 'So a lot of weeks, I was fending for myself and a lot of times, I'd find new writers to work with. 'When writers know how to put you in the show, you fit in easily, but as this new cast member, I wasn't coming in with a ton of characters or experience and I didn't know where I fit in the show,' Rudnitsky says. I was opening for super successful comedians.' I wasn't really in that super successful place, either.

I'd taken classes, but I wasn't in a place where I was being seen that way. I wasn't in any of the improv or sketch schools. He first got the call in a parking lot of a Minnesota casino where he was about to 'perform for a bunch of the elderly people losing money at the slot machines.' Within the span of a few weeks, he joined the show's cast for the 2015-16 season. He went pro after college and performed a memorable set at the Just For Laughs festival in Montreal in 2015 that caught the eye of Saturday Night Live producers. Rudnitsky has been doing stand-up since he was 16 at open mics in New York and New Jersey. He's also headlining his own stand-up tour, which comes to the Dallas Comedy Club on Friday, Dec. Since then, he's also won roles opposite George Clooney in Hulu's adaptation of Joseph Heller's Catch-22 and made appearances on shows Tacoma FD, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Hulu's critically acclaimed The Big Leap.

Rudnitsky has built an impressive resume in a short time. That movie helped me feel that SNL wasn't my only avenue. 'I went from doing stand-up in a bowling alley in Waukesha, Michigan, to shooting a movie with an Oscar winner.

Five nights at pinkies pictures