Miles Teller was hesitant to joke about destroyed home on Saturday Night Live

Miles Teller was hesitant about mentioning that he lost his home in the California wildfires during his Saturday Night Live monologue.

The Top Gun: Maverick star, who guest-hosted the sketch show earlier this month, concluded his opening monologue by mentioning that he and his wife Keleigh lost their home in the Pacific Palisades fire in January. He assured viewers that they were fine before jokingly pointing out the fire exits in the building.

In an interview with Collider, Teller shared that he came up with the "fire exits" joke and admitted that he was originally reluctant to address his loss in a comedy monologue.

"I didn't necessarily want to talk about it," he explained. "I'm not a stand-up comedian. Some of that audience doesn't know, necessarily, who you are, and they always want something sincere to hang jokes off of, which I agree with. I'm not an overly jokey person to begin with. I always feel like sincerity and honesty is a good place to start from in any performance, or just your outlook on life."

The Whiplash star is ultimately glad that the SNL writers convinced him to talk about it live on air, adding, "If I can laugh about it, then I think it shows the audience, 'He's okay.'"

The 38-year-old candidly revealed that he and Keleigh are still "grieving" their home, and the sadness "comes in waves".

"It's gonna take a long while to just feel like you have that sense of home again. Home is not just four walls. It's really someplace where you acquire memories," he said.

"And people say, 'Oh, it's just stuff.' But it's not - those are memories... I'm talking about this thing from my grandma, or this thing from that movie I did, or this thing from when I was a kid. All that s**t's gone... There's going to be really hard days, and then there will be days where the sun is shining a little more."