Natasha Lyonne’s biggest regret is that she never accepted any of her then-boyfriend Fred Armisen’s invitations to visit Lorne Michaels’ blueberry farm in Maine.
“My big regret was never going to Maine,” she said on the Fly on the Wall podcast. “Like, Fred would invite me, and I would just be like, ‘Ah, I’m writing,’ or something. And now I look back, and I’m like, ‘Oh, wow. I could have really seen where the jam was from.’”
Lyonne and Armisen dated for eight years, from 2014 to 2022. SNL’s Maya Rudolph brought Armisen to Lyonne’s apartment, where Lyonne was chain-smoking in a silk robe and sunglasses. She autographed a copy of Legs McNeil’s oral history Please Kill Me for Armisen and said, “Welcome, kid. Fred—what a name. Happy birthday. Enjoy the book.”
Lyonne later joked that their relationship ended over a swimming pool.
“I honestly think we broke up because I wanted a swimming pool,” Lyonne said shortly after their breakup. “We love each other just about as much as two people can love each other, and we’re still talking all the time. But Freddy doesn’t like a swimming pool.”
The exes remain close friends. Lyonne said on Fly on the Wall that Armisen gave her some of the best career advice she’d received. When Lyonne was preparing to host the Season 47 finale of SNL, Armisen told her that the show isn’t about the celebrity guest; it’s about the cast members, especially given she was hosting former SNL star Aidy Bryant’s last show.
“It’s actually just straight-up not about the host,” Lyonne said. “And I think walking in to do it knowing that—especially because it was a finale, and it was, like, Aidy’s last show and all that kind of stuff—really, really helped.”
“I think Fred is, like, such an anomaly because he’s a late arrival to show biz,” Lyonne, who began her acting career as a child star, continued. “I think he’s well-equipped to enjoy the ride instead of thinking it’s fully about him, and he had such a positive experience with SNL that it really shaped probably my sense of what it was.”
As for the blueberry farm, Lyonne made sure to give hosts David Spade and Dana Carvey a heads-up that Michaels’ Maine estate is supposedly “the best place for an apocalypse.”
