Before she was President Selina Meyer or Elaine Benes, Julia Louis-Dreyfus got her start in show business like many comedy legends do: On Saturday Night Live.

But it looks like the actress got off on the wrong foot with her colleagues, according to a story she shared with Catherine O’Hara on Louis-Dreyfus’ podcast Wiser Than Me.

Louis-Dreyfus explained that she and her co-stars were hired on to SNL after producers saw them perform as part of the Practical Theater company in Chicago. Though they thought it would be the opportunity of a lifetime, their first performance at the SNL offices did not go well because their new co-stars “already hated” them, she said.

“They had us four complete and total unknowns, perform the first act of the show in the SNL office, under fluorescent lights in the middle of the day in front of 20 very cynical, unfriendly SNL cast members and writers who already hated us because a bunch of their best friends had just been fired to make room for us,” she recalled. “We never had a chance.”

She didn’t specify who was in attendance that day, but she said, “Sketches that had killed in Chicago died a terrible, terrible death that day. It was excruciating.”

Louis-Dreyfus, who has been candid about how difficult she found her time on the show, admitted the “humiliation” from that performance “influenced our whole SNL experience for the next couple of years.”

“I’ve learned a lot since that cringey day in a carpeted office on the 17th floor of 30 Rock,” she told O’Hara.

Louis-Dreyfus joined the cast of SNL for Season 8 in 1982 when she was just 21 years old. She has since returned to host the sketch comedy show three times, and she has certainly noticed a difference in how women are treated now on the show.

“I’ve hosted a couple of times and it was like going back to high school and getting to redo things,” she said. “The only thing that is different is obviously a different cast [and it is] more female friendly and different producers.”

O’Hara agreed that they’re more inclined to “find material for [women] to do” on the show.

“Yes, as opposed to, ‘She can be the waitress…your coffee, Mr. Gumby,'” Louis-Dreyfus joked.

The Seinfeld star has previously admitted that the show could be “very sexist” in her day. And, while it was a “brutal” experience for her, Louis-Dreyfus said it taught her to only take on jobs that gave her “a deep sense of happiness.”

“I’ve applied that, moving forward, and it’s worked. So in that sense, I have SNL to thank,” she said.