‘Saturday Night Live’ Cast Shake-Up Confirmed

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Saturday Night Live Producer Lorne Michaels has confirmed that there will be a cast shakeup ahead of Season 51.

Puck reports that Michaels responded in the affirmative when asked if there would be a cast shakeup for Season 51. “Yeah, for sure. It’ll be announced in a week or so.”

Additionally, the producer says he intended to hold his core cast together through the show’s 50th anniversary. He revealed, “Last season, when we were at the party of the first show, quarter of four in the morning, Dana [Carvey, who played Joe Biden] comes over to me and says, ‘I don’t think anyone knows you called me June 4th [to play Biden].’”

He added, “I wanted people coming back and being part of [the 50th season]. So when Kate [McKinnon] hosted, Kristen [Wiig] and Maya [Rudolph] came back for it. And that meant there couldn’t be those kinds of disruptions [to the cast], or anything that was going to take the focus off [the 50th season]. And we had an election.”

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Michaels did confirm the return of one cast member, James Austin Johnson as Donald Trump, and wouldn’t comment about his retirement (Michaels is 80). However, he would share that some on his team would be getting additional responsibilities moving forward.

“That’s already been happening [in] the past year or so. More people are involved in the choices and in the decisions,” he explained. “But I’m not worried about A.I. because A.I. can’t guess what I’m gonna do between 10 and 11 [on show nights]… because I have no idea!

There are a lot of people in that room with a lot of opinions. I make the final decision, obviously. But it’s not as if people don’t let me know how strongly they feel.”

Saturday Night Live debuts Season 52 on October 4, 2025, on Saturday at 11:35 p.m. ET.