SNL Season 50: Which Cast Members Got the Most (and Least) Screen Time?

That’s a wrap on Saturday Night Live‘s milestone 50th season, but there’s one more matter to put to rest: who among the show’s cast accrued the most (and least) screen time over the course of the entire season?

If you’re a regular LateNighter reader, you know we track the individual screen times of each of the show’s credited players on a weekly basis. (you can view an archive of our weekly screen time reports here.)

Taking each of those weeks into account (and not including February’s anniversary specials or any other non-canon appearances beyond SNL‘s 20 regular season episodes), each of the show’s 14 repertory performers and three featured players appeared on screen for an average total of one hour, 28 minutes and 10 seconds. Three succeeded in clocking in beyond two hours, while five fell short of reaching the one-hour mark. Scroll down to see how all 17 regulars (plus the Please Don’t Destroy trio) stacked up against each other.

Note: Our screen time calculation method has been developed in partnership with longtime SNL statistician Mike Murray, host of the Saturday Night Network’s weekly By The Numbers podcast. We prioritize face time, meaning that any contiguous (off-screen but in-scene) moments and practically all 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.

Colin Jost – 2:14:09 / 10.71%

This was the second consecutive season in which Colin Jost topped each of his castmates in accrued screen time. In addition to logging an average of six minutes and 32 seconds in each “Weekend Update” segment, he appeared in half a dozen other sketches over the course of the season for a total of three minutes and 25 seconds.

Sarah Sherman – 2:02:01 / 9.75%

Sarah Sherman holds multiple Season 50 records, including most “Weekend Update” guest appearances (six) and most episodes as the cast member with the highest screen time (four). Among the show’s returning cast members, she also saw the largest screen time increase from Seasons 49 to 50, growing her season-long total by a whopping 36 minutes and 55 seconds.

Bowen Yang – 2:00:39 / 9.64%

Building on his season-long screen time average by three minutes over last year, Bowen Yang topped our weekly screen time reports three times this season (for episodes 1, 2 and 10). Alongside Sherman, he was the only cast member to hold that title for more than two episodes.

Andrew Dismukes – 1:51:44 / 8.92%

Although Andrew Dismukes accrued the highest sketch count of the season (appearing in a total of 79 sketches), that did not translate to the most screen time across those sketches. In fact, there wasn’t a single episode across the entire season where he topped our weekly screen time report.

Ego Nwodim – 1:47:55 / 8.62%

Ego Nwodim spent one week as the season’s most prominent female cast member before losing that title on October 5th to Heidi Gardner, who, in turn, was surpassed by Sherman two weeks later. Until November 16, no woman in the current cast had more cumulative Season 50 screen time than SNL alum Maya Rudolph, who cameoed as Kamala Harris for the season’s first five cold opens.

Mikey Day – 1:45:42 / 8.44%

Mikey Day holds the Season 50 cast record for most screen time in one episode, having logged 14 minutes and 27 seconds on January 25. As it happens, he also made the briefest “Weekend Update” guest appearance of the season, appearing for 96 glorious seconds on May 10 as “A Guy Who Just Walked Into a Spiderweb.”

James Austin Johnson – 1:44:09 / 8.32%

James Austin Johnson spent over 55% of his Season 50 screen time impersonating Donald Trump in 17 sketches, all but two of which were cold opens. At the start of the show’s April 5th episode, he delivered this season’s longest single-sketch performance by any cast member outside of “Weekend Update” (5:54).

Heidi Gardner – 1:42:40 / 8.20%

Gardner stands apart from the rest of the cast in having given her longest performance of the season in a sketch that aired in 2024 (October 19’s “ShopTV: Halloween Cookies”). Her December 7 screen time (12:56) was the highest for a female cast member in a single Season 50 episode.

Marcello Hernandez – 1:38:17 / 7.85%

Marcello Hernandez’s first season as a repertory player saw him build upon his his Season 49 screen time total by more than 20 minutes. Apart from Jost and Michael Che, he accumulated more “Weekend Update” screen time than any other male cast member this season (17:06), beating fellow five-time visitor Yang by just one second.

Kenan Thompson – 1:27:59 / 7.03%

Kenan Thompson’s cumulative screen time for Season 50 was down more than twelve minutes compared to Season 49, seeing him drop from the number 5 spot among his fellow regulars last year to number 10 this year. Alongside Sherman, Yang, and Gardner, Thompson is one of four Season 50 repertory cast members who logged their highest single episode screen time during the first half of the season.

Michael Che – 1:27:26 / 6.98%

On average, Che was seen in 32.68% of each Season 50 “Weekend Update” segment, while Jost appeared in 48.42%. The only time this season that Che clocked in higher than Jost was December 7, when he conducted that night’s lone guest interview, with Hernandez and Gardner as a football player and his Mom Whose Son Just Got Famous.

Chloe Fineman – 1:03:14 / 5.05%

Chloe Fineman was Season 50’s lone cast member to never visit “Weekend Update” nor appear in a single segment for more than four minutes. Along with Yang and Gardner, she was one of only three regulars who accrued less screen time in the second half of the season than the first.

Ashley Padilla – 56:32 / 4.52%

Ashley Padilla pulled out ahead of her fellow featured players in season-long screen time on January 25th, and held on to that lead throughout the rest of the season. She finished first among the show’s featured players 10 times, whereas Jane Wickline and Emil Wakim did so seven and three times, respectively.

Michael Longfellow – 54:52 / 4.38%

Michael Longfellow is one of four repertory players who was absent from at least one Season 50 episode, with the others being Day, Fineman, and Devon Walker. He improved upon his Season 49 total by more than 15 minutes.

Emil Wakim – 52:35 / 4.20%

Wakim gave this season’s longest single-sketch performance by a featured player in January 25’s “Founding Fathers Cold Open” (5:52). He closed out the season with a higher average screen time per segment than either Padilla or Wickline, with 60.7 seconds compared to their respective 57.5 and 60.2 seconds.

Jane Wickline – 48:09 / 3.85%

At 52 minutes and 25 seconds, Season 50’s featured player screen time average was more than five minutes greater than Season 49. Of this season’s three new hires, Wickline was the only player to appear in all 20 episodes (Wakim and Padilla were shut out one week each.)

Devon Walker – 40:39 / 3.25%

Unlike Hernandez and Longfellow, Walker accumulated less screen time during his first season as a repertory cast member than he did in his last season as a featured player. He was the only Season 50 regular to never appear in more than five minutes of a single episode and the only male cast member with a segment average lower than 60 seconds.

John Higgins – 7:06 / 0.57%

The six Please Don’t Destroy sketches that aired this season ranged in length from 2:52 (“Mikey Madison is Squidward”) to 4:51 (“First Class”). The trio have now starred in 34 aired shorts over the course of four seasons.

Ben Marshall – 7:06 / 0.57%

Though each of the Please Don’t Destroy members finished Season 50 with practically equal screen time totals, Ben Marshall spent most of the season trailing the other two by at least 30 seconds before pulling ahead of them on April 12.

Martin Herlihy – 7:04 / 0.56%

Martin Herlihy was the only Please Don’t Destroy member to log any Season 50 screen time outside of the group’s pretapes. With his face fully covered by a mask, he made a 17-second live appearance as the ancient deity Lamashtu in March 8’s “Birthday at Friendly’s.”