Saturday Night Live has seen an exodus of veteran cast members in the last few seasons. Since the completion of Season 49 in May of 2024, five cast members have left after lengthy stretches in the ensemble.
After Season 49, the likable Punkie Johnson chose to leave the cast after four seasons. Following historic Season 50, Heidi Gardner (sort of) retired from the show after eight stellar seasons as one of SNL’s leading ladies. She was joined in her exit by best pal Ego Nwodim, who chose to leave the program before Season 51. Last December in the midst of the 51st season, popular cast member Bowen Yang had his sendoff in the now iconic Christmas show hosted by Ariana Grande. Then last month Chloe Fineman, a seven-year cast member like Yang, announced she would not return for Season 52.
The program is in a transitionary period, moving on from a cast held together in part by Gardner/Fineman/Nwodim/Yang. The future seems to be led by Ashley Padilla, Jeremy Culhane, and perhaps the quirky duo of Veronika Slowikowska and Jane Wickline. Somehow rather suddenly, Marcello Hernandez, who enters his fifth season next month, seems like part of the past. The next 12-16 months may see several more departures as the cast flips over in a big way.
JAJ is invaluable for his Trump card
Andrew Dismukes, James Austin Johnson, and Sarah Sherman are solid backbones for sketch work or impressions, in the case of JAJ as Donald Trump. But Dismukes and Sherman, entering their 7th and 6th seasons respectively, don’t seem like they’ll be around much longer. Youth must be served, and new faces are here and more will be coming to remake the long-running NBC late night show.
What about Kenan Thompson, Michael Che, Mikey Day, and Colin Jost, a quartet that doesn’t seem to want to give up their seats at the table? All four have been SNL employees for at least a decade, and in the case of Kenan, he will be starting his record 24th season in the fall. Where SNL was once seen as a launching pad to greater successes, it’s now a career for some. I’ll unpack what I think will happen with this group at the bottom of this article.
The next cast member who will leave SNL
The candidates for the next SNL cast member who will leave the show come down to three, in my opinion: Sherman, Dismukes, and Hernandez. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them was not asked back after Season 52. My money would be on Dismukes, who serves as an excellent actor in sketches, but doesn’t have an iconic character that would keep him on the program. Seven years feels like enough for him.
Sherman’s singularly unique personality and humor makes her more valuable as a cast member. No one since maybe Chris Kattan or Martin Short has been as uniquely zany and able to endear themselves to the audience in costume and as characters that are way, way over the top. Sherman could, if she so desired, be a female Thompson, and come back year after year, serving as a capable sketch performer with her dependable, funny Weekend Update appearances as her masterpieces.
Hernandez is the current veteran cast member with the most potential outside of SNL. He has the personality to be the star of a television show or movie. He could slide into a game show or TV show host role, or be a very strong supporting comic actor in a series. Marcello also has a good standup career. He feels like an entertainer who might try to follow the path of Chris Rock and Tracy Morgan: outrageous personalities who can add much laughter and bravado to almost any project. But I think Hernandez will probably stick at SNL for a seven-year run, which would give us two more years of Joaquín Antonio González Hernández Suárez and Domingo.
The case of JAJ is unique. His Trump impression is gold for Saturday Night Live. It’s so iconic that it’s difficult to see anyone else playing Trump if he left. That means he’s probably attached to SNL at least until the next presidential election, which would come in Season 54. That would give JAJ eight seasons on the show. In recent years he’s also proven he can give SNL other gifts, like his musical performances and voices and characters beyond Trump. Is there a universe where JAJ succeeds Darrel Hammond as SNL announcer and voice-over talent? I don’t think that’s impossible.
Will Kenan, Jost & Che, and Mikey ever leave?
Thompson will be 50 years old in the middle of Season 53. It may be reasonable to think he would call it quits after 25 seasons at the age of 50. He’s now spent more than half his life as a sketch performer, first in All That on Nickelodeon starting when he was 16 years old. Thompson is an institution at Studio 8H. Many viewers don’t know SNL without Kenan. Even with a smaller workload the last few seasons, Thompson is a strong cast member who anchors game show sketches and often performs his patented last second ‘pop-ins” on sketches. I suspect we’ll see Kenan for at least two more seasons. Lorne Michaels has reportedly told him that he can stay as long as he’d like.
Writer turned performer Mikey Day has been with SNL for 13 seasons, the last 10 as a cast member. Day’s fingerprints have been all over SNL the last decade, for better and worse. He’s penned a handful of memorable sketches, but he’s also ushered in an era of lightweight premises and too often leans into easy one-off jokes like bodily function gags, funny names, and purposefully trying to break up the actors. He’s a polarizing figure who seems destined to be categorized among a “fine but not particularly memorable” personality in SNL history.
Day feels like an SNL lifer. Where does he go from here? He’s 46 years old and only has a couple of forgettable Disney movies on his work ledger outside of SNL. His partnership with Streeter Seidel, a lead writer on SNL, may cement those two together to make a run on the show through the inevitable exit of Michaels.
The big question for SNL as it continues into it’s second 50 years is whether the Weekend Update tandem of Colin Jost and Michael Che will keep their stranglehold on the anchor chairs. Update is a large part of the program, usually occupying 15-20 minutes of airtime smack dab in the middle of the show. As Update hosts, Jost and Che have an oversized impact on the comedic tone of the show. That’s fine for a while, but it’s grown far too safe, stale, and self-aggrandizing. Too often, Che and Jost are trying to be cute and share in-jokes and banter. In a full season we’re now lucky to get three or four biting, satirical, clever jokes from this duo. New voices are desperately needed.
But, Michaels seems to want to be safe as he approaches his mid-80s. Jost satisfies the white, celebrity-driven audience members who don’t want to think about humor. They just want to hear about Scarlett Johansson. And Michael Che: he always feels like he wants to be edgy, but settles for remaining mainstream to draw a paycheck.
At some point Weekend Update needs to be refreshed. Too often SNL has jettisoned younger talent who could have made an impact at the anchor desk because Che and Jost wouldn’t leave. Some think Jost is angling to replace Michaels, and Che, well he keeps hinting he will leave every year, but he seems attached to Colin by a thread.
