Saturday Night Live will kick off Season 51 on Oct. 4 with host Bad Bunny and musical guest Doja Cat, after weeks of farewells from departing cast members and writers.
The long-running NBC variety show finally announced its full cast on Sept. 7, which will consist of 17 comedians, with 12 returning from Season 50 and five new featured players.
Michael Che and Colin Jost will return to cohost “Weekend Update,” and Mikey Day, Andrew Dismukes, Chloe Fineman, Marcello Hernandez, James Austin Johnson, Sarah Sherman, Kenan Thompson and Bowen Yang are returning, alongside featured players Ashley Padilla and Jane Wickline, Deadline reported.
Days after the new season’s cast was announced, Ego Nwodim, who was included in the lineup, wrote on an Instagram Story that she was leaving because “circumstances” had changed, leading her to pursue other opportunities.
“The hardest part of a great party is knowing when to say goodnight,” she said.
Nwodim joined SNL for its 44th season in 2018 as a featured player before being promoted to the repertory ahead of the 46th season in 2020.
Cast shakeups are not uncommon between seasons of SNL. Ahead of last season’s Sept. 28, 2024, premiere, NBC announced that Molly Kearney, Punkie Johnson and Chloe Troast would not be returning to the show, while Wickline, Padilla and Emil Wakim would be joining the cast.
Other ‘Saturday Night Live’ departures ahead of Season 51
The comedy trio Please Don’t Destroy, known for creating digital shorts on Saturday Night Live over the last four seasons, will no longer produce pretaped sketches for the show starting this season, Variety reported on Sept. 2. One group member, Ben Marshall, is now part of the show’s cast, while Martin Herlihy remains on the writing staff. John Higgins shared on Instagram that he left the show entirely to pursue other acting projects.
Marshall is a featured player alongside new performers Kam Patterson, Veronika Slowikowska, Tommy Brennan and Jeremy Culhane.
Multiple outlets reported on Aug. 28 that Heidi Gardner was leaving Saturday Night Live after eight seasons. The actress joined the late-night sketch show in 2017. Gardner, whose memorable characters include Bailey Gismert, a teenage film critic for “Weekend Update,” and Brie Bacardi, became the longest-tenured active female cast member during Season 50. The previous year, the Shrinking star appeared in more sketches than her fellow castmates.
Gardner’s departure was revealed hours after Variety confirmed that cast member Longfellow, who joined the popular NBC sketch show in Season 48 as a featured player, would be exiting after three seasons. Longfellow was known for making memorable appearances on “Weekend Update” segments and joking about timely topics such as Real ID and TikTok. The touring stand-up comic has also appeared in the movie Good Burger 2. The news of his departure comes after LateNighter recently reported he was screen-tested as a “Weekend Update” host back in May.
Heidi Gardner is also not returning for the 51st season of Saturday Night Live. (Mary Ellen Matthews/NBC)
Wakim announced in an Aug. 27 Instagram post that he was leaving the show too.
“It was a gut punch of a call to get but i’m so grateful for my time there,” Wakim wrote.
He joined SNL in 2024 as a featured player for Season 50. He described working on the show as “the most terrifying, thrilling, and rewarding experience of my life.”
Walker was the first cast member to reveal he was leaving, which he did in an Instagram post on Aug. 25.
“Me and the show did three years together, and sometimes it was really cool. Sometimes it was toxic as hell,” Walker wrote. “But we did what we made the most of what it was, even amidst all the dysfunction.”
Walker, whose background is in standup comedy, joined SNL in 2022, along with Longfellow, Marcello Hernandez and Kearney. He became known on the show for his celebrity impressions, including New York City Mayor Eric Adams, former NFL player and ABC host Michael Strahan and Golden State Warriors player Draymond Green.
In an Instagram story posted alongside his announcement, Walker added, “Just to be clear, this is good news!! It was just time for me to do something different.”
Devon Walker was the first cast member to announce he was leaving the NBC comedy sketch series. (Mary Ellen Matthews/NBC)
Two SNL writers have also recently announced they are leaving the show.
Comedian Rosebud Baker, who has worked on the show’s “Weekend Update” team since February 2022, confirmed this week that she won’t be returning for the next season in an interview with LateNighter contributor Jon Schneider.
Prior to the announcement, Baker talked about how stressful it was to write for “Weekend Update” in the Aug. 11 episode of David Spade and Dana Carvey’s podcast, Fly on the Wall. Spade and Carvey are former SNL cast members who overlapped for three seasons in the ’90s.
“It’s like training yourself to be a sociopath or a psychopath,” Baker said. “You just read these horrible, horrific headlines and you’re like, what’s funny [or] hilarious about this?”
Writer Celeste Yim also announced on Aug. 24 that they’ll be departing SNL after five seasons.
“Lorne hired me over the phone when I was 23 and the job literally made all my dreams come true BUT it was also grueling and I slept in my office every week,” Yim wrote on Instagram. “I hate when other people say this, but it’s true that I was the first ever out trans person to be a writer for SNL. I always felt honored to be working within the long tradition of queer writing at the show.”
Yim also thanked fellow cast member Bowen Yang for “changing my life and for making me feel normal.” Yang joined the writing staff in 2018 and became a cast member the following season.
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