After four cuts to last year’s cast and five new additions, Lorne Michaels has reportedly finalized the lineup for Saturday Night Live’s 51st season. That’s according to Deadline’s Peter White, who reported Sunday night that the legendary sketch show is welcoming back thirteen members of its Season 50 cast.
The biggest question heading into the summer was the future of “Weekend Update.” Though Colin Jost’s return seemed assured after his wife Scarlett Johansson seemed to confirm it this weekend at the Toronto Film Festival, Michael Che remained an open question. But according to White, Che will also back alongside Jost, keeping “Update” intact for the start of the new season.
That puts SNL‘s Season 51 cast at 18 players total: Che, Jost, Mikey Day, Andrew Dismukes, Chloe Fineman, Marcello Hernandez, James Austin Johnson, Ego Nwodim, Sarah Sherman, Kenan Thompson, and Bowen Yang, joined by featured players Ashley Padilla and Jane Wickline, plus this season’s five announced newcomers: Ben Marshall, Tommy Brennan, Jeremy Culhane, Kam Patterson, and Veronika Slowikowska.
As for who’s out, Heidi Gardner is the most prominent departure, leaving after eight seasons—reportedly not by choice. She’s joined by Michael Longfellow, Devon Walker, and Emil Wakim. Their exits, reported in recent weeks, fueled talk of a larger shake-up, but it would seem Michaels opted to keep the veteran core largely intact—at least for now. Especially with longer-tenured cast members, mid-season departures on their own terms are always a possibility.
SNL‘s median cast size over 50 seasons has been 14. Though this year’s cast ranks significanty higher than that, it’s lower than the show’s two COVID-era Seasons 46 and 47, when it topped at 20 and 21 cast members respectively.
As we’ve reported, Saturday Night Live just had its biggest Emmy night ever, nabbing eleven wins at Sunday night’s Creative Arts Emmys. It’s poised to add to the total by as much as four additional wins at next week’s Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony.
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I’m starting to lose my faith in Lorne Michaels at this point. He’s made isolated mistakes like Michaela Watkins or Luke Null but Chloe, Emil and Michael Longfellow over a span of two seasons? All three are horrible choices that halfway take my incentive to watch the show. Part of the fun is seeing the newbies grow into the pipeline but I’m lately feeling he has no idea how to manage the pipeline, and he’ll cruelly cut off talented people just because he’s too afraid to get the senior players to leave when it’s time to transform the show.
I know comedy is subjective, but Jane doesn’t have much appeal to a very large percentage of the commentrs on Reddit and YouTube. The best I hear is I appreciate her style is a bit different. She’s also a nepo-hire.
Emil:
-Had sharp comedy bits
-Was not particularly polarizing comedically. He didn’t have a huge segment who thought he wasn’t funny. He might not have been considered the next great cast member by many, but he was generally considered a guy who could get in some proverbial base hits.
-Fit into sketches pretty decently for a stand-up comedian
-Represented a certain demographic with a unique point of view
-Wasn’t a nepohire
Michaels like Seth Rogen’s character in Studio who’s cowardice just ends up screwing everyone most of the time
g r e a t !!
I’m not surprised that Che and Jost are coming back. They’ve been doing WU for so long that, at the very least, they deserve a proper sendoff.
Meanwhile, having *seven* featured players feels like a lot…unless it turns out that Padilla and Wickline are getting upgraded to the main group.