On Aug. 28, Devon Walker, Emil Wakim and Michael Longfellow announced on their respective Instagram accounts that they would be departing from Saturday Night Live (SNL) ahead of its 51st season. Soon after, major cast member Heidi Gardener also announced that she would not appear in season 51.
The late-night sketch comedy show had barely wrapped its milestone 50th season when rumors of a cast shake-up began circulating. The previous season included many celebrity guest stars such as Sabrina Carpenter, Mikey Madison and Paul Mescal. There were iconic sketches that took over the internet — the musical parody “Domingo” featuring Ariana Grande went so viral it received its own tribute during the SNL 50th Anniversary Special.
By appealing to Gen Z culture, SNL cultivated a large following of new fans who boosted its online presence with recreations of popular sketches and songs on social media.
“They got rid of three cast members who hadn’t had experience or time to shine on the show. So it definitely was a bleak reflection for younger people trying to get into comedy,” Graye Sesty, FCLC ’28
Graye Sesty, Fordham College at Lincoln Center ’28, is a member of Stove’s Comedy Club on campus and an SNL fan who followed the recent drama.
“The general assumption at that point was that a lot of older cast members or the writers that had been on staff longer would be leaving because they had been there for a while,” Sesty said. “There were a lot of cast members who were just getting started.”
Longfellow and Walker joined SNL in 2022, while Wakim joined in 2024. Their short-lived tenures pale in comparison to veterans like Kenan Thompson and Mikey Day, who some presumed would be moving on.
The departing cast members had represented a new generation of talent, signaling to younger fans that they can be part of a legacy comedy show.
“They got rid of three cast members who hadn’t had experience or time to shine on the show. So it definitely was a bleak reflection for younger people trying to get into comedy,” said Sesty. “(They might) think that this huge staple show of the American comedy scene wasn’t even giving young people a chance.”
The quick-to-rise, faster-to-fall trend among Gen Z cast members may signal job instability for young performers hoping to grace the vaunted NBC set.
Earning a spot at SNL is notoriously difficult, and young comedians flock to local comedy clubs to perform sets in the hope of getting scouted or blowing up on the internet. However, the role that social media plays in casting decisions has seemingly only intensified. One of the incoming cast members for season 51 is Veronika Slowikowska, who has racked up over 48 million likes on TikTok across popular sketch comedy videos. If there is any rule of thumb for aspiring comedy performers in this age, it is to leverage your digital presence.
But social media may prove disadvantageous to up-and-comers in the long run, as it accelerates the scouting process and generates an ever-changing pool of young talent to draw from. New cast members who got their start online may be seen as easily replaced.
As of Sept. 2, SNL has welcomed five new cast members — Ben Marshall, who was previously featured on the show as part of the comedy trio “Please Don’t Destroy,” TikTok-viral comedians Slowikowska and Jeremy Culhane, and Kam Patterson and Tommy Brennan — both of whom have amassed cult followings online for their stand-up comedy. The newcomers have varying degrees of experience in show business, acting and their local stand-up scene, but all boast significant social media followings.
With Marshall added to the main cast, that means that “Please Don’t Destroy” has disbanded — at least at SNL. Several writers on staff are also saying farewell, including Celeste Yim, known for their collaborations with Bowen Yang, and Rosebud Baker, who wrote for the Weekend Update segment for four seasons. In their farewell statement, Yim noted the “grueling” nature of the job.
Nonetheless, Sesty is still holding out hope for the acclaimed comedy show and its new cast.
“There’s a tiny bit of hope in the fact that they did hire five new people, which was more than anyone was expecting, at least from a fan perspective,” they said.
As an institutional titan in the comedy world, it is hard not to see portents in the cast changes at SNL. The quick-to-rise, faster-to-fall trend among Gen Z cast members may signal job instability for young performers hoping to grace the vaunted NBC set. For student comedians at Fordham, SNL stardom is still an uphill battle — but the cast changes signify that it might be increasingly fought on the digital stage.
