Saturday Night Live‘s Lorne Michaels Acknowledges ‘Difficult’ Transition Year Ahead in Wake of 7 Cast Exits
Saturday Night Live is heading into Season 48 down a staggering seven cast members, and show boss Lorne Michaels is not sugarcoating the losses.
As TVLine reported earlier this month, SNL vets Melissa Villaseñor and Alex Moffat, as well as rookie featured player Aristotle Athari, have left Studio 8H. The trio’s departure follows the previously announced exits of Aidy Bryant, Pete Davidson, Kate McKinnon and Kyle Mooney.
“This will be a transition year, and the change years are always difficult,” Michaels conceded to reporters backstage at Monday’s Emmy Awards, where SNL was named Outstanding Variety Series for the sixth straight year, before adding that such turnover can be “exciting” because “there are new people and things are changing and a different generation comes into the show.”
Michaels went on to reveal that “four new people” would be joining SNL when it returns on Oct. 1, although he declined to reveal the identity of the incoming freshman.
Regarding the timing of the mass cast exodus, Michaels believes the departures would have been more staggered were it not for the pandemic. “I think people might’ve left earlier, but there was no place to go,” he told reporters. “It was difficult, particularly when you’re rehearsing in masks and it’s all protocols and there’s nothing to do after the show except go home. I think that there was just a bonding [that happened] and I think people got very close. When we did those at-home shows, you got to see everyone’s apartment and actually where they live and how they live. So there was an intimacy and a connection between the audience and this group. I couldn’t imagine leaving work without that whole team, so we just kept going.”
After the last time, probably spending extra time digging thru the life of the new 4 cast members before people on the internet do it first and after they make the announcement.
I’ll never understand how they do these cast change ups – weren’t most of them effectively fired? Ideally, fire less of them if some are leaving voluntarily so you don’t have a mass exodus? I feel like I’m missing something here.
As he said some of them should have left few seasons ago , but because of the pandemic they stayed. Some of them have been there 10+ seasons so it was definitely their time to go. He should have built up new cast instead of relying on the old ready to go cast
Cast members do decide to leave on their own, if they´ve had enough or want to do something else, far from everyone is fired. Most cast members that are on the show for 3-4+ years decide themselves.
Even after all of the people who left, they’re still getting some new people?
Losing 7 people from over 20 cast members is not “staggering”. They still have way too many cast members still. There really should be around 10-12 total.
OG not ready for primetime was 8, 9 if you count George Coe for 10 episodes . this was 1975 and they carried the show. Lorne Michaels shouldn’t make excuses for having a large non talented cast. As they you to say “Jane you ignorant S!*t. ” fix you show.
Points for honesty when an EP announces publicly that their show will be awful this season.
And yet Kenan is still there. Maybe if Lorne had built up the cast instead of hanging on to cat members for 10 years , he wouldn’t be in this predicament
How about getting rid of several of the *writers* on the show? That is where the show suffers. Try to get fewer Harvard grads next time. They only thing one way…like Harvard grads.