Was Chloe Troast cut from SNL because a guest of hers bothered Lorne Michaels at one of the show’s infamous after parties? Our money’s on no, but that’s one of the theories floated in a new profile of the SNL honcho.
Reeves Wiedeman’s lengthy New York magazine article dives deep into Michaels and his stewardship of Saturday Night Live— but it’s what the article says about Chloe Troast’s departure from the show that’s caught the attention of the former featured player’s fans.
“SNL remains a place where people never quite know where they stand, even after they’re gone,” Wiedeman writes.
To illustrate that point, he references Chloe Troast, who was unexpectedly cut from the show ahead of Season 50 following a well-received first year as a featured player.
“I heard several rumors about why cast member Chloe Troast wasn’t asked back to the show this season,” Wiedeman writes. Some were unsurprising, including the theory that “the writers couldn’t figure out how to use her.”
Others, however, pointed to pettier circumstances. Among the hearsay in the SNL community was a rumor that Troast “had been asked to lose weight after the season was over.” Another: Michaels “wanted to shake things up” after deciding the “staff had grown complacent.”
But the oddest of the theories put forward in the piece is this one: “Troast had invited a friend to the show’s after-party who sidled up to Michaels’s table and stole a piece of food off his plate.”
The New York article makes clear that each of these theories are just speculation, with Wiedeman recounting asking an anonymous SNL veteran which theory she felt held the most water, and “she cautioned against believing anything when it came to sussing out Michaels’s decisions.”
As the unnamed SNL source put it: “Maybe all of that is true, but here’s the thing: We’ll never know because he’ll never say… And she’ll always wonder.”
Troast herself has said she felt “broken” in the wake of being cut from the show, but credits former castmate Molly Kearney with helping her through it. “SNL was my dream, and now I have a lot of time to dream new dreams.”
