Editor’s note: LateNighter’s SNL stats guru Mike Murray hosts Saturday Night Network’s weekly By the Numbers podcast. Watch it live here at LateNighter Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT , or catch the replay afterwards.
After Ashley Padilla defied Saturday Night Live odds and emerged as Season 51 screen-time leader, is another featured player set to follow in her footsteps?
Second-year player Jeremy Culhane is off to a roaring start, topping the cast in screen time for this weekend’s Season 52 premiere.
Host Jalen Brunson was plenty busy himself, with the New York Knicks star and 2026 NBA champion pulling in an above-average screentime tally as measured against the show’s last 50 first-time hosts.
And what about this season’s two new featured players? Grace Reiter and Saidah Belo-Osagie both made their SNL debuts Saturday night—but one got considerably more face time than the other.
Here’s how the numbers shook out for each of this week’s named performers:
Note: Our screen time calculation method prioritizes face time, meaning that any contiguous (off-screen but in-scene) moments and most partial body appearances do not count. Screen time in the opening credits, bumpers, goodnights, and cut-for-time sketches are not included, nor do those portions factor into our assessment of the episode’s total running time.
Inside the Numbers
Jeremy Culhane leads the cast for the first time
Culhane opened his sophomore season with a career-high 9:35 of screen time, leading the cast for the first time in his 21-episode SNL career. That narrowly topped his previous best of 9:23, set during May’s Season 51 finale with host Will Ferrell.
Both episodes featured Culhane in prominent "Weekend Update" appearances. In May, he brought “Mr. On Blast” back for a second visit; this week, his Tucker Carlson returned for the third time. His longest appearance of the night, however, came in the High School Musical-inspired pretape "North High," which accounted for 3:30 of his total.
Ashley Padilla picks up where she left off
After leading the entire cast last season with more than two and a half hours of screen time—a remarkable feat for a featured player—Padilla wasted little time making her presence felt in Year 3.
Newly promoted to the repertory cast, Padilla debuted her Natalie Harp impression in the cold open. It was familiar territory for Padilla, who last season played Pam Bondi, Karoline Leavitt, and Kristi Noem alongside James Austin Johnson’s Donald Trump.
There was another familiar element to Padilla’s premiere: Just as she did in last season’s Bad Bunny-hosted opener, she took a leading role in a second-half sketch centered on a parent-teacher conference.
Jalen Brunson puts in an above-average first-time hosting performance
Athletes don’t always get the heaviest workloads when they host SNL, but Brunson spent little time on the sidelines this week. With 21:05 of screen time, he came in well above the 19:38 average for the show’s last 50 first-time hosts.
Brunson was SNL’s first athlete host since Travis Kelce in 2023. He joined Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, and LeBron James as NBA players tapped to host a season premiere.
Ben Marshall marks his 100th appearance with a career high
Ben Marshall had a milestone night, making his 100th SNL appearance while setting a new personal best with 7:17 of screen time.
Marshall has only crossed the five-minute mark twice before, in episodes hosted by Connor Storrie (5:43) and Matt Damon (5:17). This week, he landed sizable roles in four of the night’s six live sketches, more than doubling his Season 51 average of just over three minutes per episode.
Kam Patterson gets more time away from the "Update" desk
Kam Patterson began his second season with more than two minutes of live sketch screen time—a mark he reached just three times during his rookie year.
He finished last among cast members in total screen time last season, when his six "Weekend Update" appearances accounted for 41.6% of his total. More opportunities in live sketches could give Patterson a very different screen-time profile in his sophomore season.
Kenan Thompson starts Year 24 with a heavy workload
Kenan Thompson began his record-extending 24th season with a reminder of just how much screen time he can command when called upon. His tenure now spans nearly 46% of SNL’s history, having surpassed Darrell Hammond’s previous record of 14 seasons back in 2017.
Thompson’s average screen time declined by roughly two and a half minutes per episode between Seasons 48 and 51. But he came out swinging in Brunson’s premiere, doubling his Season 51 average with substantial roles in “Parent Teacher Conference” (3:09) and “Old Friend” (3:13).
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