For a show that gets so much comedy out of the British class system, Saturday Night Live UK has been refreshingly uninterested in making its newest cast member feel second class.
Freddie Meredith joined the show’s second season as the lone addition to an ensemble that had already found its footing. Five episodes later, he’s become such a consistent presence that it is increasingly difficult to imagine the group without him.
That was hardly guaranteed. One of the most impressive things about SNL UK’s first series was how quickly its 11 cast members established themselves as an ensemble. Rather than immediately organizing itself around a handful of stars, the show gave viewers a chance to discover each of its different performers in different combinations.
Adding a 12th cast member presented a test: Could a newcomer find room in a cast that already seemed unusually well balanced?
SNL UK wasted no time answering that question when the Series 2 premiere put Meredith alongside Jeff Goldblum in “Dating Coach,” giving audiences an immediate introduction to what he could do. Since then, he’s had at least one showcase in every episode, and now ranks among the cast’s top three in cumulative sketch appearances this season.
In other words, SNL UK didn’t just hire Meredith. It used him.
That has allowed viewers to get a quick read on both Meredith as a performer and the comic sensibility he brings to the show.
There are echoes of Mike Myers’ arrival on the American Saturday Night Live in 1989. Myers also joined a strong cast without an obvious vacancy to fill and quickly carved out space for himself.
More than three decades later, that process can look very different for newcomers to the American show.
As a rule, new hires on SNL enter as featured players, a designation that separates them from the repertory cast before the first sketch begins. The title itself is not necessarily the problem. Plenty of featured players have ultimately broken through, from Myers to Ashley Padilla.
But the distinction reflects a larger philosophy. New cast members are often treated less like performers the show has decided it wants audiences to meet than prospects who first have to earn their way into regular use.
This season offers two very different examples. Through the first three episodes, new featured player Saidah Belo-Osagie has logged just 1:07 of screen time, while buzzy fellow newcomer Grace Reiter has fared considerably better, with 10:50.
Reiter might seem like the more obvious American counterpart to Meredith. But stack her up against the rest of the cast, and she’s logged less screen time than all but one of SNL’s repertory players, Jane Wickline.
SNL UK has one built-in advantage when it comes to spreading the wealth: Its cast has just 12 members, compared with 17 on the American show. There are simply fewer performers competing for a finite amount of sketch time. But SNL UK has still made a conscious choice to fold its lone newcomer directly into the ensemble rather than place him in a separate tier.
That gets at the larger difference. SNL’s newcomers may break through at different speeds, but they begin the season in a separate tier. SNL UK added Meredith to an established ensemble and immediately treated him as part of it.
Five episodes in, viewers have been given enough of Meredith to form an opinion. That should be the minimum goal when a sketch show hires someone: Give them enough opportunities to show audiences why they were hired in the first place.
Let viewers learn their timing, their characters, and their point of view. Find out what they can contribute by actually putting them on television.
Meredith has rewarded that approach. He entered a cast that did not appear to need fixing and, in short order, made it feel as though adding him was the obvious thing to do.
As SNL UK prepares to close the first half of Series 2 this weekend with host Cynthia Erivo and musical guest Blossoms, Meredith is no longer being introduced as the new guy. He is simply part of the show.
That may be the most useful thing the American SNL can learn from him: When you hire someone because you think they belong on Saturday Night Live, there’s something to be said for acting like it.
Get stories like this in your inbox: Sign up for LateNighter’s free daily newsletter.
