'Veep' Star Julia Louis-Dreyfus Was "Miserable" at 'SNL' Even Though She Was With Her Husband

• Veep star and 11-time Emmy winner Julia Louis-Dreyfus and her husband, Brad Hall, met at Northwestern University. They were then hired together as cast members of Saturday Night Live.
• Julia and Brad got married in 1987. They have two children together, Henry, 27, and Charlie, 22.
• Brad was right by Julia's side when she battled breast cancer in 2017 and beat the disease.
• Julia Louis-Dreyfus is nominated for "Lead Actress in a Comedy Series" at the 2019 Primetime Emmy Awards, which airs Sunday, September 22 on Fox at 8 p.m. ET.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus is poised to win big at the 2019 Primetime Emmys. She's nominated once again for the coveted "Lead Actress in a Comedy Series" Emmy Award for her work on the hit HBO series Veep. The comedy filmed its last of seven seasons and is nominated for a whopping nine awards this time around.

The 58-year-old actress made history in 2017 when she became the first actress to win "Lead Actress in a Comedy Series" for six consecutive years for the same role. Should the actress, who in addition to starring in Veep serves as the show’s executive producer, win the Emmy again this year, her husband of 32 years, Brad Hall, will undoubtedly be by her side.

As the love story goes, Julia met Brad while attending college at Northwestern University. The budding actress joined a theatre group co-founded by Brad called the "Practical Theatre Company." Saturday Night Live writer Tim Kazurinsky soon discovered the talented comedians and hired both Julia and Brad for the NBC show in 1982.

Unfortunately, Julia didn't think she fit in well at SNL, even though the experience allowed her to work with Brad. In fact, she revealed to Entertainment Weekly that she was "pretty miserable."

Of her time working on SNL, Julia told The New Yorker, “It was a very dog-eat-dog environment. I didn’t go in armed with a bag of characters from which to pluck. I came into it naïvely, with this notion that it would be ensemble work, and that writers would be trying to write for everyone. But it was very political and very male-centric. Very.”

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With that being said, the actress does look back on her early days with Brad fondly.

“He looked like Björn Borg or something," she said. "I remember thinking early on that this was the guy for me, but I didn’t dare tell anyone, for fear they would say, ‘That’s ridiculous. You’re so young — you don’t know what you’re talking about.’ So I kept that little secret close to my heart.”

Executive changes to SNL resulted in Brad leaving the show in 1984, with Julia exiting the following year. By then, the two had joined forces romantically and moved out to Los Angeles, eventually marrying in 1987. The duo went on to have two sons — Henry, 27, a singer-songwriter, and Charlie, 22, who recently graduated from Northwestern.

Julia went on to star as Elaine Benes for nine seasons on the cult favorite Seinfeld, while Brad pursued different acting opportunities on Curb Your Enthusiasm and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Brad was also the director of Picture Paris (which Julia starred in) and staff writer for several different television series, including Frasier. Today, Brad and Julia continue to collaborate and work together professionally. Most notably, Brad got to direct his wife in three episodes of Veep.

With the hit show finishing up, Brad expressed his excitement about being able to spend more quality time with his leading lady.

“Well I get my wife back! But it was such a once-in-a-lifetime thing for Jules, so I’m totally thrilled. But yeah, it’s bittersweet," he told US Weekly. “It’s been about six years and I remember her from then, and she was great! So I’m assuming she hasn’t changed very much.”

The last several years have been trying for the couple, who not only weathered a grueling filming schedule for Veep, but a life-threatening disease when Julia was diagnosed in 2017 with breast cancer. Julia was forced to take a leave of absence from Veep to undergo chemotherapy. In October of 2018 though, Julia revealed that she had beaten cancer.

Should Julia win at the Emmys this year, we're sure she'll give Brad a heartfelt shoutout, just like she has in past award shows.

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