All 174 people who have been in the Saturday Night
Live cast, grouped by when they arrived and listed in the order
they joined. The roster page has the dates, the charts, and the
photographs; this page has the sentences.
1975–1980: the original company
Seven unknowns billed as the Not Ready for Prime Time
Players, plus the writers who occasionally stepped in front of the
camera. By 1980 every one of them had gone, and so had Lorne
Michaels.
Chevy Chase
1975–1976 · 2 seasons · Weekend Update
The show's first Weekend Update anchor and the first cast member to
become famous, largely on the strength of a catchphrase ("I'm Chevy
Chase, and you're not") and a weekly pratfall as a stumbling Gerald
Ford. He left a season and a half in to make films, which made him
both the show's first defection and the proof that it could survive
one. He has hosted many times since, and his reputation among later
casts has never been especially warm.
His was the only run in the cast to end in
1976, and nobody joined that year to fill the gap; the next
newcomer, Bill Murray,
arrived the following year. Of the nine people in the 1975 intake,
six outlasted his two seasons. He and
Dan Aykroyd are the only
two of those nine who later returned to host, part of the roster's
39 alumni hosts.
The most technically precise writer-performer of the original
company, specialising in fast-talking hucksters: the Bass-O-Matic
pitchman, Irwin Mainway of Mainway Toys, a very good Nixon and a
better Jimmy Carter. He co-created the Coneheads with Laraine Newman
and the Blues Brothers with John Belushi, and left with Belushi in
1979.
Only two runs in the cast ended in 1979, his
and John Belushi's, and
the five that began later that year all went to people new to the
cast. His four seasons put him among 14 people with exactly that
many, and he is one of three of them who came back to host. He is
also one of the 24 people the roster credits at the
Weekend Update desk, where he sat
opposite Jane Curtin for
one season.
The only Black performer in the cast for the show's entire first
five years, and given material that ranged from the genuinely inspired
(Chico Escuela, the retired ballplayer for whom "béisbol been berry
berry good to me") to what he has since described plainly as
demeaning. He stayed all five original seasons, longer than Chase,
Belushi, or Aykroyd, and has been candid about how difficult they
were.
Four of the 15 people on the roster who
finished with exactly five seasons started on the first night:
Morris, Jane Curtin,
Laraine Newman and
Gilda Radner. Nobody in
that 1975 intake stayed longer. He left in 1980, when 15 runs ended
and 15 began and the show changed casts
almost wholesale; no one whose run had started earlier was still
in the cast by the end of that year. The roster also lists him among
its 58 credited writers.
Appeared in the very first episode and was credited in the opening
titles exactly once, which makes him technically a member of the
original cast and almost universally omitted from lists of it. He
worked as a character actor for another four decades.
The first performer Lorne Michaels hired, and the one the rest of
the original cast most consistently named as the best of them. She
created Roseanne Roseannadanna, Emily Litella, and Baba Wawa, and
played all three as people rather than as impressions. She died of
ovarian cancer in 1989, at 42; the cancer support organisation
Gilda's Club is named for her.
Her last season was a crowded one. Six people
joined the cast for the first time between her arrival in 1975 and
her final year, and in that final year several of the show's writers
were moved into the cast as well, among them
Alan Zweibel, her
collaborator on the characters above, credited for a single episode.
She is one of 21 people with a Best of compilation of their own, and
one of 69 on the roster with five seasons or more.
The straight woman of the original company by temperament and by
choice, which made her the natural anchor of Weekend Update for three
seasons and the only Player who read on camera as an actual adult.
She went on to two long network sitcom runs and a career notably
free of the chaos that surrounded most of her colleagues.
Weekend Update had four anchors in the original
era, and she links them: she took over the desk alone after
Chevy Chase left, then
shared it with Dan Aykroyd
and later Bill Murray. All
four are among the 24 people the roster credits as
Update anchors. Her five seasons
match the longest run in the 1975 intake, a total three other
originals share, and she left in 1980, a year in which 15 runs
ended.
The Samurai, Bluto, the Killer Bees, and half of the Blues Brothers.
The most physically committed performer the show has ever had, and
the one whose presence did the most to define what the first cast was
for. He died of a drug overdose in 1982, at 33.
Measured against the roster, his run sits near
the middle: 83 of the 174 people have four seasons or more, and four
of his fellow originals, Jane
Curtin, Garrett
Morris, Laraine
Newman and Gilda
Radner, stayed one season longer than he did. Only one person
joined the cast for the first time while he was in it,
Bill Murray. He and
Dan Aykroyd left together
in 1979.
The youngest of the original cast, and a founding member of the
Groundlings before she got there. She played a Conehead, and
specialised in a very particular kind of vacant Californian that
nobody else in the company could do at all. She has had a long
second career as one of the busiest voice actors in animation.
Five seasons was the ceiling for the 1975
intake, and four of its nine members reached it: Newman,
Jane Curtin,
Garrett Morris and
Gilda Radner. That is a
longer run than 105 of the roster's 174 people have had. The four
left together in 1980, with
Bill Murray, on the night
Lorne Michaels stepped down as producer, and none of the five ever
returned to the cast.
The show's first head writer and the first person ever to speak on
it, in the wolverines sketch that opened episode one. He performed
rarely, most memorably as Mr. Mike. His sensibility (hostile,
literary, and actively uninterested in being liked) is most of what
separated the early show from a conventional variety hour.
As a cast member he lasted one season on the
roster's count, the same as
George Coe; the other seven
people who first joined in 1975 all stayed longer, four of them for
five seasons. Writing was the job he kept. He is one of the 58
people the roster credits as writers, a group traced in
the essay on writer-performers,
and for him the performing credit is much the smaller part of his
time at the show.
Joined as Chevy Chase's replacement, had a famously rough first few
months, and then dealt with it by going on air and asking the
audience directly to please like him. He became the show's second
Weekend Update anchor and, in the end, the most durable film star the
entire original company produced.
Nobody else joined the cast in 1977; he was
that year's whole intake, arriving in a company of six originals,
Dan Aykroyd,
John Belushi,
Jane Curtin,
Garrett Morris,
Laraine Newman and
Gilda Radner, who had more
than a season's head start. He finished level with Aykroyd and
Belushi on four seasons, one short of the other four. Of the 14
people with exactly four, he is one of three who later came back to
host.
A writer first and a performer second, across three separate stints
spanning sixteen years, the longest gap between first and last
appearance of anyone on this list. He created Stuart Smalley, and
later served as a United States Senator for Minnesota, which makes
him the only cast member to have been sworn into federal office.
Three separate runs make him unique on the
roster, and only three others have more than one:
Brian Doyle-Murray,
Don Novello and
Harry Shearer, all of
whom, like him, first joined in 1979 or 1980.
The four who came back
have an essay of their own. His eight seasons are four times the
most anyone else in his 1979 intake reached, and he is one of 27
people with eight or more. His last run ended in 1995, a year in
which 12 runs closed.
Father Guido Sarducci, the chain-smoking gossip columnist for the
Vatican newspaper, which is one of very few characters from the
period that comedians still perform. Novello wrote for the show as
well, across two stints five years apart.
His second run began in 1985, when 12 runs
started in a single year. Eleven belonged to newcomers and the
remaining one was his, which is why the count of arrivals for that
year depends on whether a return
counts. That run ended in 1986 along with those of most of that
intake. He is one of four people on the roster with more than one
run, and one of 15 who finished with exactly two seasons.
Joined twice and left twice, both times unhappily; he has been open
about not enjoying the process either round. Between the two stints
he co-created This Is Spinal Tap, and afterwards became
several dozen residents of Springfield on The Simpsons.
A band leader and occasional performer, best known here as record
executive Don Kirshner and for his part in the Blues Brothers'
arrangements. He left to spend three decades as David Letterman's
bandleader, which is the longest continuous job anyone on this list
has held.
Hosting is rare for anyone whose time in the
cast comes to one season: only seven such people have come back to
do it, and he is one, which puts him among the roster's
alumni hosts. His 1979 intake split
sharply. He and Tom Davis
were gone after one season, Don
Novello and Harry
Shearer reached two apiece across two runs each, and
Al Franken reached eight.
Half of Franken & Davis, one of the show's founding writing
teams, and a writer far more than a performer across a long
association with the programme. He died in 2012.
He joined in 1979 alongside his writing partner
Al Franken, and their totals
could hardly be further apart: Franken's reached eight seasons
across three runs, while Davis's stopped at one. Of the five people
in that intake, he and Paul
Shaffer are the two who lasted a single season, and all five,
Don Novello and
Harry Shearer included,
were out of the cast by the end of 1980, a year in which 15 runs
ended.
1980–1985: Doumanian, Ebersol, and the near-death years
Michaels left in 1980 and took the writers with him.
What followed was the fastest turnover in the show's history, a
mid-season purge, and then four years in which Eddie Murphy was more or
less personally responsible for the programme still being on the
air.
Alan Zweibel
1980 · 1 season
An original 1975 writer who took a featured-performer credit in his
final season. He wrote most of Gilda Radner's best-known characters
with her, and has since had a long career as a novelist, playwright,
and collaborator on other people's books.
The original era was closing when his cast
credit came. He was among the writers moved into the cast during
season 5, and all of them left in 1980 with the repertory players,
among them Gilda Radner,
his partner on her best-known characters. His run and
Tom Schiller's were the
briefest of those additions, one episode each. Of the 15 people the
roster counts in the 1980 intake, he is one of 12 whose time came to
one season.
Hired by Jean Doumanian for the sixth season and dismissed with
almost the entire cast in March 1981, in the largest single firing
the show has ever carried out.
In 1980 the cast turned over completely: 15
runs began and 15 ended, more of each than in any other year on the
roster, and nobody whose run had started earlier was still in the
cast by the end of it, so the company she joined that autumn shared
no one with the one that had finished in May. She was one of six
hired straight into the repertory cast for
the season six premiere, and left with
most of them the following March.
Bill Murray's older brother and a Second City veteran in his own
right, who anchored Weekend Update during the unstable stretch after
the Doumanian firings. He is better known now as a character
actor: the groundskeeper in Caddyshack, which he also
co-wrote.
Of the 15 people whose first run began in 1980,
he is the only one who left and came back, and one of just
four on the whole roster.
His second run started in 1981, one of eight that year; the other
seven belonged to newcomers, among them
Mary Gross, his first
partner at the news desk. It ended in 1982 with
Christine Ebersole's
and Tony Rosato's, the only
three runs to close that year.
Doumanian's designated star, positioned as the next Chevy Chase and
installed at the Weekend Update desk to make the point. In February
1981 he said a word on live network television that live network
television did not then permit, and within weeks he was gone and so
was the producer who hired him. He worked steadily in film and
television afterwards, and died in 2005.
He is one of the 24 people the roster credits
as Weekend Update anchors, and he
shared the desk with Gail
Matthius in his last weeks there. His dismissal in February 1981
came weeks before the wider clear-out of Jean Doumanian's cast, and
before Doumanian herself was replaced. He is one of 12 people from
the 1980 intake whose run came to a single season.
One of the season-six cast, and one of the few from it whose work is
still spoken about well. A Tony nominee before she arrived and a
regular on Dream On long after.
Joined at nineteen as a featured player who initially was not given
lines, and within two seasons was the sole reason the show still
existed. Buckwheat, Gumby, Mister Robinson, Velvet Jones. He is the
only cast member ever to have carried the programme essentially
alone, and he did it while simultaneously becoming the biggest film
star in America. He did not set foot in Studio 8H again for
thirty-five years.
He and Joe
Piscopo lasted longest of the 15 people who first joined in
1980, four seasons each, and he is the only one of the 15 who has
come back to host. Between 1981 and 1983, 11 people joined the cast
for the first time, as the show changed producers around him. He
left in 1984, one of five runs to end that year, alongside Piscopo,
Robin Duke,
Brad Hall and
Tim Kazurinsky, though
he went a few months before them.
A season-six cast member who briefly anchored Weekend Update in the
months after Charles Rocket's departure. She has had a long career
since in voice acting.
She and
Charles Rocket are the
only two of the season six premiere's six repertory players to have
anchored Weekend Update, and they shared the desk for a few weeks
early in 1981. That puts her among the 24 people the roster credits
as Update anchors, with one of the
shorter stints in the group. When the show returned that autumn,
Brian Doyle-Murray
and Mary Gross were at the
desk.
Spent a season being almost entirely unused by a show that had no
idea what to do with him, and then became far more famous on his own
terms, first as the loudest voice in American comedy and a fixture
of the roast circuit, and eventually Iago in Aladdin. He died in
2022.
He was one of seven cast members let go
together in March 1981, when the incoming producer cleared out most
of the season six company; of the 15 people who first joined in
1980, only Eddie Murphy
and Joe Piscopo stayed on.
Some of their replacements lasted far longer. Of the seven people
who first joined in 1981, Robin
Duke, Mary Gross and
Tim Kazurinsky each
reached four seasons.
Overwhelmingly a writer: head writer for large stretches of the
show's history across three decades, and the person most responsible
for the shape of its political cold opens. The performer credit is a
technicality attached to one of the longest and most influential
tenures anyone has had here.
His performing credit belongs to the end of the
Lorne Michaels years rather than to what followed. He was one of
three writers moved into the cast in January 1980, with
Peter Aykroyd and
Brian Doyle-Murray,
and his run ended with that season, one of 15 to end in 1980. The
roster counts him among its 58 credited writers, the subject of
a separate essay, and among the
12 people from the 1980 intake whose time came to one season.
The other survivor of the 1981 purge, and Eddie Murphy's partner for
four seasons. His Frank Sinatra, his sportscaster, and his relentless
Doug Whiner held the show together through years in which it had very
little else.
He was the last of the roster's 1980 intake to
leave the cast: when he went in 1984, every other member of that
group of 15 was already gone,
Eddie Murphy by a few
months. Of the six repertory players who opened season six, his is
the only run that reached a second season. He left alongside three
people who had arrived after him,
Robin Duke,
Brad Hall and
Tim Kazurinsky.
A featured player in the sixth season, and afterwards a working
television actor for decades, most visibly on Beverly Hills,
90210.
The roster groups
arrivals by calendar year, so he shares an intake with people
who were never in the cast at the same time as him: the writers who
joined it in the first half of 1980 had left by May, well before he
arrived that December with
Patrick Weathers. Of
that intake of 15, he is one of 12 whose run came to one season, and
like Weathers he was never promoted from featured player.
A featured player and musician in the Doumanian season, and one of
several hires from that year whose work has barely survived in
circulation.
Every run that ended in 1981 lasted a single
season, and there were 10 of them: his, seven others from Jean
Doumanian's cast, and the brief runs of
Laurie Metcalf and
Emily Prager at the end of
the season. He had arrived in December 1980 with
Matthew Laurance, a
few weeks after the premiere, and the two left together the
following March.
Dan Aykroyd's younger brother, moved from writer to featured player
partway through the fifth season. He died in 2021.
The roster counts him in its largest intake,
the 15 people whose first run began in
1980, but he belongs to the first half of that year: he moved
from the writing staff into the cast that January with
Jim Downey and
Brian Doyle-Murray,
and left with the rest of that season's cast in May. Twelve of the
15 lasted one season. His brother
Dan Aykroyd had left the
cast the year before.
A writer from the very first season, best known for the short films
he directed for the show ("Java Junkie," "Don't Look Back in
Anger"), which are among the few pieces of 1970s SNL that
read as cinema rather than as television.
A single credited episode, in April 1980
alongside Alan Zweibel, is
his whole time in the cast, and on the roster that counts as a
season. It also puts him in the largest
intake on the roster, the 15 people whose first run began in
1980, split between the last additions to the original show and the
new cast assembled that autumn. Only three of the 15 stayed longer
than one season: Brian
Doyle-Murray, Eddie
Murphy and Joe
Piscopo.
The first Black woman in the cast, credited as a featured player
after several seasons of appearing as an extra. Very little has been
written about her tenure, which is itself part of the record of that
period.
She arrived in December 1980, a few weeks into
the season, as did Matthew
Laurance and Patrick
Weathers; all three were featured players, none was promoted,
and all three were gone by the spring. Twelve of the roster's
one-season members come from the 1980
intake alone, and she is one of them. Of those 15 arrivals, only
Eddie Murphy has come back
to host.
A trained singer and stage actress who spent one season on the show,
briefly anchoring Weekend Update during its most unstable stretch,
and went on to win two Tony Awards.
She debuted the same night as
Mary Gross in 1981, and
their runs went opposite ways: Gross stayed four seasons, Ebersole
one. She is among the three people from that year's intake of seven
whose time came to a single season. At the Update desk she partnered
Brian Doyle-Murray,
and the two left together in 1982, with
Tony Rosato, at the end of
season seven.
Credited for a single episode in the aftermath of the Doumanian
firings. She was a novelist and journalist before, and has been one
since.
The seven people who first joined in 1981
divide cleanly: Robin Duke,
Mary Gross and
Tim Kazurinsky reached
four seasons, Tony Rosato
two, and Prager,
Christine Ebersole
and Laurie Metcalf one
each. None of the seven has returned to host. Her run is one of 10
that ended in 1981, a year in which more runs ended than began.
Appeared in one episode before a writers' strike ended the season,
which gives her the shortest tenure of anyone ever credited. She went
on to Roseanne, four Emmys, and three Tony Awards. That is
comfortably the most decorated career of any one-episode cast
member.
Her run both began and ended in 1981, a year in
which 10 runs ended and only 8 began. She came in with Dick
Ebersol's first additions, Robin
Duke, Tim Kazurinsky
and Tony Rosato, and of
those four runs hers is the only one that never reached repertory.
She is one of the people whose whole run
comes to a single season, and of the seven who first joined in
1981, four stayed longer.
One of the steadiest performers of the Ebersol years and one of the
very few hired in that period who lasted the whole of it. She wrote
for the show as well as appearing on it.
She opened season seven at the news desk beside
Brian Doyle-Murray,
and is one of 24 people the roster credits as Update anchors. Of the
seven people who first joined in 1981, none stayed longer than her
four seasons, a total she shares with
Robin Duke and
Tim Kazurinsky. She was
still there at the end, leaving in 1985 with the rest of the season
ten cast: 10 runs ended that year and 12 began, as the show started
over with a new company.
A Second City Toronto and SCTV alumna who arrived with Tony
Rosato and stayed four seasons. She has spent much of her career
since teaching the form in Toronto.
She was one of four people Dick Ebersol brought
in during April 1981, in his first weeks running the show, alongside
Tim Kazurinsky,
Tony Rosato and
Laurie Metcalf. Their
runs spread widely: Metcalf's lasted a single episode, Rosato's two
seasons, and Duke's and Kazurinsky's four apiece, a total no one in
the 1981 intake passed. Her run ended in 1984 with
Joe Piscopo's, one of five
runs to close that year.
A writer and performer through the Ebersol years, and best
remembered by a much wider audience as Sweetchuck in the
Police Academy films.
When he arrived in April 1981, only two people
from the cast of the previous autumn were still there,
Eddie Murphy and
Joe Piscopo, and his four
seasons would match theirs. Of the seven people who first joined in
1981, three lasted a single season and none has since returned to
host. Christine Ebersole and Mary Gross joined that autumn, four
more newcomers followed in 1982 and 1983, and he left in 1984,
together with Piscopo, Robin
Duke and Brad Hall.
Came over from SCTV with Robin Duke, and later became one
of the most prolific voice actors in Canadian animation. He died in
2017.
He and
Robin Duke came over
together in April 1981, and her run lasted twice as long as his:
four seasons to his two. That puts him among the 15 people on the
roster who finished with exactly two seasons. Of the seven who first
joined in 1981, three have more seasons than he does and three
fewer. His run ended in 1982, at the close of season seven, along
with those of Brian
Doyle-Murray and
Christine Ebersole.
Anchored Weekend Update for two seasons, in a period when the desk
changed hands almost annually. He became a writer and director, and
has been married to Julia Louis-Dreyfus since 1987.
Three runs ended in 1982 and three began: his,
Gary Kroeger's and
Julia
Louis-Dreyfus's, all hired out of the same Chicago theatre
company. Hall left a year before the other two. His two seasons
closed in 1984 beside four runs of four seasons each, those of Robin
Duke, Tim Kazurinsky, Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo, and in the whole
of his time only one person joined the cast for the first time. He
is one of the 24 people the roster
credits as Weekend Update anchors.
Three seasons in the Ebersol cast, mostly as a utility player and
impressionist, the person who filled whichever role a sketch needed
filling.
Kroeger and
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
came out of the 1982 intake level at three seasons apiece, a year
longer than Brad Hall, who
arrived with them. Around them the cast kept changing: between 1983
and 1984, six people joined for the first time. His was one of ten
runs to end in 1985, and by the spring the entire company was gone.
Three seasons puts him among the 95 people on the roster with three
or more; 79 have fewer.
Hired at 21, the youngest woman ever cast to that point, and by her
own account she had a fairly miserable time of it. Everything that
made her one of the great television comic actors of the following
forty years (Seinfeld, Veep, eleven Emmys)
happened after she left.
Of the three who first joined in 1982, she is
the one who has come back to host;
neither Brad Hall nor
Gary Kroeger has. Among
the ten people on the roster who finished with exactly three
seasons, only two have hosted. She and Kroeger stayed the same
length of time and left in the same spring of 1985.
Joined four years after his brother died, into a version of the show
that no longer resembled the one John had been on. Two seasons here,
then a long career in film and television on his own terms.
Nobody else first joined the cast in 1983. His
was the only run to begin that year and none ended, so he walked
into a settled company of eight, among them
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
and Gary Kroeger. Five
newcomers followed the next year while he was still there. Then it
came apart: in 1985 ten runs ended, his
among them, and nobody whose run began before that year was
left.
One of Dick Ebersol's ringers, and the one who got the most out of
the year: Fernando and "you look mahvelous" both came out of a single
season. He had been booked on the very first episode in 1975 and cut
for time, which took nine years to put right.
Five people first joined in 1984, and all five,
Crystal included, lasted exactly one
season. He opened that season at the Weekend Update desk and had
handed it to Christopher
Guest by December, so both of that season's anchors came from
the same intake. Of the five, only he and
Martin Short later
returned to host.
Arrived having already made This Is Spinal Tap, spent a
season anchoring the segment then called Saturday Night News, and
left to invent the modern improvised mockumentary more or less
single-handedly.
Guest took over the Weekend Update desk in
December 1984 from Billy
Crystal, who had arrived with him that autumn, and kept it until
the finale; he is one of the 24 anchors
on the roster. The 1985 exit that followed was total. Ten runs
ended that year and twelve began, and nobody who had been in the
cast that April was still there when the next season opened.
Brought Ed Grimley and Jackie Rogers Jr. over from SCTV and
had one of the most productive single seasons anyone has managed
here. He has hosted many times since, and is one of the few alumni
whose relationship with the show never soured.
A star of Not the Nine O'Clock News in Britain before
joining for a season. She left performing altogether afterwards and
is now a practising clinical psychologist.
Stephenson arrived in a year of moderate
turnover, five runs ending and six beginning, and left in a much
heavier one: ten ended in 1985 and twelve began. None of the four
who arrived alongside her stayed past that first year either, which
puts her whole intake among the site's
one-season cast members. Nor did any
of the four people already in the cast when she joined outlast
her.
Brought "sniglets" (invented words for things that do not have
them) with him from Not Necessarily the News. He has had a
long stand-up career since, mostly in the United Kingdom.
Six runs began in 1984. Five belonged to
newcomers hired straight into the repertory, Hall among them, and
the sixth was Harry Shearer coming back. None of the five got a
second season. Hall is also one of the
58 cast members credited as
writers, a credit that
Billy Crystal,
Christopher Guest and
Martin Short from the same
intake share. His season ended with the rest of the company in
1985.
Michaels returned in 1985 to a cast of famous names
that did not work, and NBC came close to cancelling the show outright.
Almost the entire company was replaced after a single season: that 1985
intake of twelve was the second largest the show has ever made, behind
only 1980, and nine of the twelve were gone a year later. The intake
that followed is the one that saved it.
Anthony Michael Hall
1985–1986 · 1 season
Cast at seventeen, straight out of The Breakfast Club,
making him the youngest cast member the show has ever had. The season
went badly for nearly everyone in it, and he went with the rest.
Hall's intake can be counted two ways. Eleven
people joined the cast for the first time in 1985, but twelve runs
began that year, because Don Novello came back as well;
joined or arrived explains the
difference. Either count describes a company almost wholly new, and
Hall, like most of it, lasted a single season.
Fired mid-season for deliberately altering a character during a live
broadcast, which is one of very few outright on-air dismissals in the
show's history. He went on to In Living Color, which became
the closest thing SNL has ever had to a direct
competitor.
He was one of 11 people who joined the cast for
the first time in 1985, the year the show was rebuilt almost from
nothing. The rebuild did not hold: eight of those 11, Wayans among
them, lasted a single season, and only
Nora Dunn,
Jon Lovitz and
Dennis Miller stayed on.
He is one of the people whose time in the
cast adds up to one season, and one of just seven of them who
have since come back to host.
A stand-up hired for the eleventh season and given almost nothing to
do. He has described it since as a straightforwardly bad
experience.
Vitale and
Damon Wayans were the two
featured players among the eleven newcomers of 1985, and neither
lasted until the season finale: Vitale was let go in February 1986,
Wayans the month after. Vitale is one of 112 people the roster has
ever billed as featured
players.
The first Black woman hired as a repertory player. She was given
stereotyped material she disliked, left after a season, and died of
breast cancer in 1994 at 40. Her work is far better regarded now than
the show managed to make it at the time.
Season 11 opened with nine new repertory
players and two new featured ones, and Vance was among the nine. Of
those nine, only Nora Dunn,
Jon Lovitz and
Dennis Miller were back
for season 12. Her time adds up to a single season, which places her
among the roster's one-season members.
Anchored Weekend Update for six seasons and rebuilt the desk around
a persona (smirking, over-referenced, visibly delighted with
itself) that every anchor since has had to define themselves
against.
Of the eleven people who first joined in 1985,
Miller stayed longest: six seasons, against five for
Nora Dunn and
Jon Lovitz, and he spent
them at the Weekend Update desk.
Between 1986 and 1990, 13 people joined the cast for the first time.
He left in 1991 with A.
Whitney Brown, whose six seasons match his, and
Jan Hooks; he and Brown are
two of 53 people on the roster with six or more.
One season in the show's worst year, followed by two Academy Award
nominations and a forty-year film career.
Six of the performers introduced in November
1985 were not back the following autumn, and Cusack was one of them,
along with Robert Downey
Jr., Anthony
Michael Hall, Randy
Quaid, Terry Sweeney
and Danitra Vance. Two
more from that intake had already gone before the season ended. The
three who did stay on all reached five seasons or more.
Tommy Flanagan the Pathological Liar, Master Thespian, Hanukkah
Harry. One of three performers from the 1985 intake to survive the
purge, and the one who most defined the transition between the old
show and the new one.
Five seasons puts Lovitz among the 69 people
with five or more, and he stands out within the 15 who finished with
exactly five: he is one of four of them who came back to host, and
one of 21 cast members with a Best of compilation. Three of the
eleven people who first joined in 1985 later hosted, and he was the
only one of the three to stay beyond a single season.
Pat Stevens, and half of the Sweeney Sisters with Jan Hooks. She
left the show in 1990 by publicly boycotting an episode hosted by
Andrew Dice Clay, which remains the most consequential act of protest
by a sitting cast member.
Dunn and
Jon Lovitz ran in step: both
first joined in 1985, both lasted five seasons, and theirs were the
only two runs to end in 1990, a year in which five began. Of the
eleven who first joined that year, only
Dennis Miller stayed
longer. Between 1986 and 1989, eight people joined the cast for the
first time, Jan Hooks, her
partner in the Sweeney Sisters, among them.
An Oscar-nominated film actor brought in as part of the
celebrity-hire experiment of season eleven, which worked out for him
about as well as it did for everyone else in it.
By the time Quaid started in 1985, no run from
before that year was still going. The ten runs that ended in 1985
had all closed, and of the twelve that began, every one belonged to
a newcomer except Don Novello's return. The slate was nearly wiped
again a year later, when eight of that year's eleven newcomers,
Quaid among them, were gone after one season.
Twenty years old, one season, and by every account including his own
a poor fit for the room. He is the clearest single illustration on
this list that live sketch comedy is a specific skill rather than a
general one.
Three people from the 1985 intake later came
back to host: Downey, Jon
Lovitz and Damon
Wayans. Lovitz had five seasons behind him; Downey and Wayans
had one each, which is unusual: of the
39 former cast members who have
hosted, only seven had a single season in the cast. Wayans was
gone by March 1986; Downey saw the season out.
The first openly gay cast member, hired in 1985, which is earlier
than the show usually gets credit for. Best known for playing Nancy
Reagan. He wrote for the programme after leaving the cast.
"The Big Picture," a recurring Weekend Update commentary spot,
across six seasons. More a writer who appeared than a sketch
performer, and one of the most distinctive voices of the period.
On the roster Brown counts with the 1986
intake, because his run starts that calendar year, but he arrived in
March, midway through season 11, the same month Damon Wayans was let
go. The calendar-year rule
puts him beside the five who joined that autumn rather than with the
season he actually started in. He matched
Victoria Jackson at
six seasons, and left mid-season in 1991, the year
Dennis Miller and
Jan Hooks also went.
The Church Lady, Garth, Hans, and a George H. W. Bush impression so
widely repeated that Bush eventually invited him to the White House
to perform it. Probably the most purely gifted impressionist the show
has employed.
Of the 12 people on the roster who finished
with exactly seven seasons, seven have come back to host, Carvey
among them. Only two of his 1986 intake stayed longer,
Phil Hartman and
Kevin Nealon. He left
partway through season 18, in a year when three runs ended and three
began, and between 1987 and 1992, 14 people had joined the cast for
the first time.
Half of the Sweeney Sisters, and the show's most reliably
actor-first performer of the period, the one who played women as
people rather than as premises. She died in 2014.
Hooks had the shortest run of the six who first
joined in 1986, and it still came to five seasons; nobody in that
intake lasted fewer. She is one of 15 people on the roster who
finished with exactly five. Nora
Dunn, her partner in the Sweeney Sisters, was already in the
cast when she arrived. Hooks left in 1991, the same spring as
Dennis Miller.
Nine seasons, three of them anchoring Weekend Update, and Mr.
Subliminal. One of the longest tenures of the era, served almost
entirely in a cast where somebody else was always getting the
attention.
Nealon was the longest-serving of the 1986
intake, a season ahead of Phil
Hartman, and he is one of 16 people with nine seasons or more.
He began as a featured
player and took the Weekend Update desk from
Dennis Miller in 1991.
Between 1987 and 1994, 21 people joined the cast for the first time.
His exit came in the 1995 overhaul, when twelve runs ended, his
included, and nine began.
Bill Clinton, Frank Sinatra, Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer, the Anal
Retentive Chef. Known inside the show as the Glue, because he could
hold together any sketch he was placed in and proceeded to do so
several hundred times. He was murdered by his wife in 1998, at
49.
Hartman is one of 27 people on the roster with
eight seasons or more; 147 have fewer. The cast around him turned
over steadily, with 17 people joining for the first time between
1987 and 1993, and he left in 1994 alongside Rob Schneider, Julia
Sweeney and Melanie Hutsell, four of the five runs that ended that
year.
The high breathy voice and the handstands, across six seasons of the
show's recovery. Her public life since has taken her a considerable
distance from the programme.
In 1992, the year Jackson's run ended, not a
single run in the cast began. Three ended, hers and the one-season
runs of Beth Cahill and Siobhan Fallon. She had arrived in 1986
alongside Dana Carvey,
Phil Hartman and three
others, and between 1987 and 1991, 14 people joined for the first
time. Her six seasons tie her with
A. Whitney Brown of the
same intake, and 53 people have six or more.
Lasted four episodes. He wanted to make short films rather than
perform live, and left to do exactly that: The Ben Stiller
Show, then Reality Bites, then everything else.
Only two people joined the cast for the first
time in 1989, and they could hardly have fared more differently.
Mike Myers stayed seven
seasons; Stiller's four episodes count as one, putting him among the
roster's one-season members. He
stepped into a settled company that included Mike Myers, hired two
months earlier, and ten people from earlier years, Dana Carvey, Phil
Hartman, Jan Hooks and Jon Lovitz among them, and nobody else left
the cast that year. Both of that year's arrivals later came back to
host.
Wayne Campbell, Dieter, Linda Richman, Simon. He turned a
public-access parody into two feature films, and remains one of very
few cast members whose SNL character became a genuine
box-office franchise.
Between 1990 and 1994, 19 people joined the
cast for the first time, and only one of them, Tim Meadows, stayed
longer than his seven seasons. His own intake was just two: he
arrived in January 1989 and Ben
Stiller followed that spring for four episodes. Seven seasons
puts Myers in a group of 12 people who finished with exactly that
total, seven of whom came back to host. He left in January 1995, the
earliest of the 12 runs in the cast to end that year.
The most commercially successful cast in the show's
history, and the one that got the worst press since 1981. It ended in
1995 with a purge nearly as complete as Doumanian's.
Chris Farley
1990–1995 · 5 seasons
Matt Foley, the Chippendales audition, the Chris Farley Show. A
performer of enormous physical commitment and visible sweetness, who
was compared to John Belushi constantly and then died the same way,
of an overdose in 1997, at 33.
The 1990 intake was five strong and unusually
durable: none of Chris Rock,
Rob Schneider,
David Spade,
Julia Sweeney or Farley
left after a single season, and three of the five later came back to
host. Within that group only Spade, with six seasons, stayed longer
than Farley's five. He went out in the 1995 overhaul, one of 12 runs
in the cast to end that year, alongside Adam Sandler and Ellen
Cleghorne, who had both arrived the year after him.
Spent three seasons in a cast that never quite worked out what to do
with him, left for In Living Color, and then became one of
the two or three most important stand-ups of his generation. His
SNL years are the least interesting part of his career,
which is unusual on this list.
Each of the other four people who first joined
in 1990 stayed longer than Rock's three seasons, from
Rob Schneider and
Julia Sweeney at four,
through Chris Farley at
five, to David Spade at six.
Short by that measure, his run is still one that 79 people on the
roster fall short of. He left in 1993, a year of three exits and
three arrivals, going out with Dana Carvey and Robert Smigel.
The receptionist, the flight attendant, Hollywood Minute. He built
an entire persona out of being the smallest and meanest person in the
room, which worked precisely because everyone around him was so
large.
Spade outlasted the other four people who first
joined in 1990: his six seasons against three to five for
Chris Rock,
Rob Schneider,
Julia Sweeney and
Chris Farley. He and Tim
Meadows were the only two people from his first season's cast to
come through the mid-decade overhaul. Between 1991 and 1995, 23
people joined the cast for the first time, and two of them, David
Koechner and Nancy Walls, left with him in 1996 after one season.
Created Pat, a character whose entire premise was an ambiguity the
show returned to considerably more often than it should have. Her
later solo stage work, particularly on her own cancer diagnosis, is
much stronger material.
Sweeney was the last of 1990's five newcomers to
arrive, in November, a couple of months behind
Chris Farley,
Chris Rock,
Rob Schneider and
David Spade. Three of those
five later came back to host; she is not among them. Her four seasons
match Schneider's exactly, and the two left in the same 1994 exit,
with Phil Hartman and Melanie Hutsell. Ten more first-timers arrived
before she went.
The Richmeister ("makin' copies") and Orgasm Guy. He left with the
1994 wave and made a long run of films with Adam Sandler.
Schneider and
Julia Sweeney came in
with the 1990 intake and went out together in 1994, each with four
seasons, the middle of their five-person group:
Chris Farley and
David Spade stayed longer
and Chris Rock did not. His
exit came in a year when five runs ended and four began, a smaller
clearing-out than the one the following spring. He is also one of
58 people credited as writers.
Opera Man, Canteen Boy, and a string of songs (the Hanukkah Song,
the Thanksgiving Song) that were closer to novelty records than to
sketches, and which the audience liked far more than the critics did.
Fired in 1995, and within five years one of the most bankable film
stars alive.
He and Tim
Meadows arrived together in February 1991, the first two of
seven people to join the cast for the first time that year.
Ellen Cleghorne,
Siobhan Fallon and
Robert Smigel followed in
September, and Beth Cahill
and Melanie Hutsell in
November. Of the seven, Sandler is the only one who has come back to
host. His five seasons put him in a group of 15 people who finished
with exactly five, just four of whom have hosted since.
One season as a featured player, best remembered for Denise Swerski
of the Delta Delta Delta sorority sketches.
Cahill and
Siobhan Fallon were the
two members of 1991's seven-person intake who lasted a single
season, and both left in 1992, as did Victoria Jackson. Nobody
replaced them that year: in 1992 three runs in the cast ended and
none began, and no one joined for the first time at any point during
her run. She is one of the people whose
time adds up to one season.
Zoraida the NBC page, and Queen Shenequa. She was the only Black
woman in the cast for four seasons, and has been open since about how
thin the material she was offered tended to be.
Cleghorne was one of seven people who first
joined the cast in 1991, a year in which seven runs began and only
three ended, so the cast got
bigger. She moved up to repertory in 1993 in the same promotion
as Tim Meadows,
Adam Sandler and
Melanie Hutsell, and
within her intake only Meadows and Sandler outlasted her four
seasons. She left in 1995 alongside Sandler, one of 12 runs in the
cast to end that year.
Jan Brady, and a run of impressions of famous women that were the
show's default use for its women performers at the time.
Hutsell's run took her through all three
billings the roster records: featured player when she arrived in
November 1991, the middle group, and repertory from 1993. She came in
with Beth Cahill, the last
two of seven first-time arrivals that year, and her three seasons sat
squarely in the middle of that intake, with three of the others
staying longer and three leaving sooner. She left in 1994, one of
five departures that year, alongside Phil Hartman, Rob Schneider and
Julia Sweeney.
Overwhelmingly a writer and animator: TV Funhouse, The Ambiguously
Gay Duo, and later Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. The performer credit
badly understates a twenty-year influence on the show's
sensibility.
Smigel came in with
Ellen Cleghorne and
Siobhan Fallon in
September 1991, a year that brought seven newcomers. Only Fallon and
Beth Cahill, with a season
each, left sooner than he did. His exit in 1993, to run the writers'
room at Late Night, fell in a year of just three departures,
the others being Dana Carvey and Chris Rock. He is one of the
58 cast members also credited as
writers.
One season in the middle group, followed by a long character career
in film and television.
Fallon's only billing on the roster is the
middle group, the tier
between featured and repertory that just 10 people ever held. She
arrived in September 1991 with
Ellen Cleghorne and
Robert Smigel, part of an
intake of seven that also brought
Tim Meadows, who stayed ten
seasons. At the other end of that group, she and
Beth Cahill were the two who
lasted one.
Ten seasons, the longest run by a Black cast member until Kenan
Thompson, and still one of the longest anyone has had. The Ladies
Man, Lionel Osbourne. He survived the 1995 purge, the 1998 turnover,
and everything in between by being consistently and unglamorously
good.
Of the seven people who first joined the cast
in 1991, Beth Cahill and
Siobhan Fallon were gone
after one season and Adam
Sandler after five; Meadows was still there in 2000, and between
1992 and 1999, 25 more people joined the cast for the first time.
His ten seasons make him one of 11 people with ten or more. He and
Aidy Bryant are the only two with exactly ten, and neither has come
back to host.
Two seasons that he has since written about at length and
unflatteringly, in a book that is one of the more honest accounts of
what the job actually feels like from the inside.
Mohr and
Norm Macdonald both
started in October 1993, with
Sarah Silverman a month
behind them, and that was the year's whole intake: three arrivals
against three exits. Mohr's two seasons fell between Silverman's one
and Macdonald's five. Newcomers kept arriving during his run, the
four hired the next autumn among them, and he went out in the 1995
finale overhaul, in a year that saw 12 runs in the cast end.
Anchored Weekend Update for three seasons and was removed from the
desk in 1998, reportedly over the sheer volume of O. J. Simpson
jokes. He is the anchor most often named by other comedians as the
best the show has had, largely because he was willing to let a joke
fail in front of ten million people. He died in 2021.
Of the three people who first joined in 1993,
Macdonald stayed longest by some way:
Sarah Silverman lasted
one season and Jay Mohr two.
With Tim Meadows and David Spade, he was one of just three people
from the cast of his first season still there after the mid-decade
overhaul. Between 1994 and 1997, 18 newcomers joined the cast. He is
one of the 24 Weekend Update anchors
on the roster.
One season, in which almost none of her material made air. She has
described it as formative in the sense that it taught her not to
write for other people.
Silverman is one of two 1993 arrivals who later
came back to host, with Norm
Macdonald; the third, Jay
Mohr, who stayed a season longer than she did, has not. No one
joined the cast for the first time during her run. Her exit in 1994
was one of five that year, alongside Phil Hartman, Rob Schneider,
Julia Sweeney and Melanie Hutsell, each of whom had been in the cast
for at least three seasons.
Arrived from Late Night and Get a Life with a
sensibility that did not fit the room, in the season the show was
under the heaviest fire it had taken in a decade. One year.
Every one of the four people who first joined
the cast in 1994 was gone the following year. Elliott,
Janeane Garofalo and
Laura Kightlinger each
lasted a single season, and
Michael McKean, credited
with two, is the only one of the group who came back to host. They
had joined a cast of ten holdovers, from Al Franken and Kevin Nealon
to Adam Sandler and Chris Farley, and Elliott left in the May 1995
overhaul that ended nine runs on one night.
Lasted most of a season and left before it ended, publicly unhappy.
Her account of how the show treated its women performers in that
period is one of the sharper criticisms on the record.
She was the one member of the 1994 intake who
did not see out the season:
Chris Elliott,
Laura Kightlinger and
Michael McKean all
stayed to the May finale, while Garofalo's last show came in
February 1995. Around the same time
Molly Shannon made her
debut, and went on to seven seasons. Garofalo's run was one of 12 in
the cast to end in 1995, and one of the roster's one-season runs.
A writer and stand-up who spent a season as a featured player and
had a long career writing for television afterwards.
Kightlinger arrived in 1994, a year in which
more runs in the cast ended than began, five to four. Of the four
newcomers, Kightlinger, Chris
Elliott, Janeane
Garofalo and Michael
McKean, three lasted a single season. She left with eight others
on the same May night in 1995, one of the mass exits looked at in
hiring in waves. She is one of 58 people
the roster also credits as writers.
Joined at 46, the oldest person ever hired into the cast, having
already made This Is Spinal Tap and Laverne &
Shirley. He arrived mid-season and stayed through the purge
year.
McKean is the only member of the 1994 intake
with a second season on the roster, and the only one of the four who
later came back to host. Chris
Elliott, Janeane
Garofalo and Laura
Kightlinger each have one. All four runs ended in 1995, a year in
which 12 runs in the cast ended and nine began, and McKean was among
the nine people who made their last appearance at that May's finale.
The 1995 rebuild inverted the previous cast's
instinct: instead of characters built to be quoted, characters built to
be committed to. It worked almost immediately.
Cheri Oteri
1995–2000 · 5 seasons
Arianna the cheerleader, Rita DelVecchio, Collette Reardon. Part of
the intake that rebuilt the show from nothing, and one of the most
physically fearless performers in it.
Oteri debuted in September 1995 with
Will Ferrell and
Darrell Hammond, and of
the nine people who first joined that year, only those two and
Molly Shannon stayed
longer than her five seasons. Unlike Ferrell and Shannon, she has
not come back to host. She left in 2000 with Tim Meadows and Colin
Quinn, three exits that year matched by three arrivals, and between
1996 and 1999, nine newcomers joined the cast.
Fourteen seasons (the record until Kenan Thompson passed it) and
more than a hundred impressions, most durably Bill Clinton and Sean
Connery. He returned in 2014 as the show's announcer after Don Pardo
died. He has written openly about the mental illness and self-harm he
was managing throughout his tenure.
He arrived in 1995, a year in which twelve runs
in the cast ended and nine began, and he outlasted the rest of that
intake by a distance. Three of the nine were gone after one season
and nobody else passed seven, so his 14 are twice the next-longest,
held by Will Ferrell and
Molly Shannon. Between
1996 and 2008, 29 people joined the cast for the first time. Since
then only two people have reached
his total: Kenan Thompson and Colin Jost, both still in the
cast.
One season, and then a very long second act as a character
actor: Champ Kind in Anchorman, Todd Packer on The
Office.
Koechner came in with
Jim Breuer and
Nancy Walls in the autumn of
1995, and he and Walls were out after a single season. The churn did
not stop with the big turnover: in 1996 four runs in the cast ended
and five began, and David Spade, one of the few holdovers from before
the rebuild, left the same year. Koechner is one of three people from
the nine-strong 1995 intake whose time adds up to one season, with
Walls and Morwenna Banks.
Goat Boy, and a Joe Pesci impression that Pesci himself turned up on
air to object to. Three seasons, then a long stand-up career.
Breuer's three seasons sit squarely in the
middle of the 1995 intake:
Darrell Hammond,
Will Ferrell,
Molly Shannon and
Cheri Oteri stayed longer,
Mark McKinney matched him,
and Morwenna Banks,
David Koechner and
Nancy Walls were gone after
one. He left in 1998, one of only two runs in the cast to end that
year; the other was Norm Macdonald's. Five people joined the cast for
the first time while Breuer was in it.
Came from The Kids in the Hall, which had already given him
a body of work more distinctive than anything the show asked of him.
Later a writer and performer on Slings & Arrows and
Superstore.
By calendar year McKinney belongs to the 1995
intake, but he got there months ahead of most of it, debuting in
January, midway through season 20, and staying on into the rebuilt
cast that autumn. His three seasons put him level with
Jim Breuer among the nine
people who first joined that year. When he left in 1997, his was the
only run in the cast to end that year, and nobody new joined it.
Mary Katherine Gallagher and Sally O'Malley. Seven seasons of a very
particular kind of performance (bodily, uncomfortable, entirely
committed) that has aged better than almost anything else from the
period.
Shannon got in before the 1995 clear-out rather
than after it, debuting in February, three months before that
season's finale swept out nine people. She was kept for the rebuild,
and her seven seasons match
Will Ferrell's, a total
that only Darrell
Hammond beat among the nine people who first joined in 1995.
Between 1996 and 2000, a dozen more people joined the cast for the
first time.
Appeared in the last four episodes of the twentieth season, hired
out of British comedy during the show's most chaotic year, and not
brought back for the rebuild.
Banks is counted on both sides of 1995's
turnover: hers was one of the nine runs that began that year and one
of the 12 that ended. She arrived in April, after
Mark McKinney and
Molly Shannon had already
come in mid-season, and was gone by the May finale, before the other
six people who first joined that year arrived in the autumn. Of that
nine, she, David Koechner
and Nancy Walls lasted a
single season.
One season, much of it on Weekend Update. She later wrote for and
appeared on The Office, and is married to Steve Carell.
When Walls arrived in September 1995, only
three people from before that year were still in the cast: Norm
Macdonald, Tim Meadows and David Spade. Everyone else had come in
during 1995, Will Ferrell,
Cheri Oteri,
Darrell Hammond and
Jim Breuer among them.
Walls, like David
Koechner, did not last beyond 1996, and she is one of the
roster's one-season members.
The most valuable player of the show's second twenty-five years.
Alex Trebek, George W. Bush, the Spartan cheerleader, more cowbell.
His method was to play the ridiculous entirely straight and outlast
the audience's resistance, and it worked so consistently that it
became the house style for a decade after he left.
In a year that saw 12 runs in the cast end,
Ferrell was one of nine newcomers, and with
Molly Shannon he is one
of just two from that group to have come back to host. The two also
stayed exactly as long, seven seasons each, and only
Darrell Hammond
outlasted them. Between 1996 and 2001, 16 people joined the cast for
the first time, and Ferrell left in 2002 alongside Ana Gasteyer.
Bobbi Mohan-Culp of the Culps, and Margaret Jo McCullen on Delicious
Dish. A trained singer whose voice was the actual engine of most of
her characters.
None of the five people who first joined in
1996 lasted only a single season, and four of them, Gasteyer
included, stayed five or more. Her six seasons put her among 53
people with six or more. The roster lists her only under
repertory billing, with no
featured years. Between 1997 and 2001, 11 people joined the cast for
the first time, and her run ended in a quiet 2002: she and
Will Ferrell were the
year's only departures, and two newcomers arrived.
Mango, Mr. Peepers, and half of the Roxbury guys. Eight seasons of a
physical style with very few precedents on the show and no real
imitators after it.
Nobody else from the 1996 intake stayed as
long. Tracy Morgan came
closest with seven, and the two of them left together in 2003, the
year Dean Edwards also
went. Kattan's eight seasons make him one of 27 people with eight or
more, and he is one of 21 cast members with a Best of compilation.
Between 1997 and 2002, 13 people joined the cast for the first time.
Took over Weekend Update from Norm Macdonald under circumstances he
had not asked for, and handled it by openly acknowledging them on
air. He has since built a run of one-person stage shows considerably
more ambitious than anything the desk allowed.
Head writer for a stretch of the mid-nineties; the performer credit
is incidental to a much larger writing role, and to a screenwriting
career afterwards.
His whole run falls inside 1996, yet the roster
counts it as two seasons: he joined for the end of season 21 and was
gone by October, early in season 22, which is
why year spans and season counts
can disagree. That puts him among 115 people with two or more.
Of the five people who first joined that year, his was the only run
that also ended in it; David
Spade, David
Koechner and Nancy
Walls left the same year.
Astronaut Jones, Brian Fellow. Seven seasons of a comic logic that
was genuinely nobody else's, followed by 30 Rock. He was
nearly killed in a highway crash in 2014 and was back on stage within
two years.
Ana
Gasteyer and Morgan arrived together as season 22 opened,
completing a 1996 intake of five that had begun with
Chris Kattan,
Colin Quinn and
Fred Wolf late the season
before. Of the five, he is the only one who has
come back to host. Only Kattan
stayed longer than his seven seasons, and the pair left together
after season 28.
The show's most precise straight man in a period that badly
needed one, and one half of "Lazy Sunday."
He and
Horatio Sanz arrived
together in 1998, alongside
Jimmy Fallon, and finished
level on eight seasons apiece after NBC budget cuts ended both runs
in 2006, along with
Finesse Mitchell's.
Between 1999 and 2005, 17 people joined the cast for the first time.
Of the 11 people with exactly eight seasons, five have come back to
host; neither Parnell nor Sanz is among them.
The first Latino cast member in the show's history, and the cast
member most likely to break during a sketch, a habit that defined an
entire era of the programme's tone.
Six seasons, half of them anchoring Weekend Update with Tina Fey,
and a well-documented inability to keep a straight face that the
audience liked considerably more than the writers did. He left for
film, then for late night, and has hosted The Tonight Show
since 2014.
The 1998 intake was just three people, and
Fallon's was the shortest of their runs:
Chris Parnell and
Horatio Sanz each reached
eight seasons to his six. He is also the only one of the three who
has come back to host. Between 1999 and 2003, 12 people joined the
cast for the first time, and when he left in 2004,
Jeff Richards was the
year's only other departure.
Debbie Downer, and one of the best pure sketch actors of the period.
Her memoir about what happened to her career afterwards is one of the
more clear-eyed things anyone from the show has written.
She was the only person to join the cast in
1999, a year in which nobody left it: hers was the one run that
began, and all 12 people already there stayed on. In 2001 she was
promoted to repertory with Tina
Fey and Maya Rudolph,
who had both arrived the year after her. She is one of 40 people
with seven or more seasons, and she and Fey left together in 2006
for 30 Rock.
2000–2012: Update reinvented, and the internet arrives
Tina Fey turned Weekend Update into a two-hander, and
in December 2005 a filmed piece called "Lazy Sunday" went onto a
nine-month-old website called YouTube. Neither the desk nor the show's
relationship with its own audience has been the same since.
Jerry Minor
2000–2001 · 1 season
One season as a featured player and writer, and later a fixture of
Mr. Show and a great deal of Adult Swim.
Tina Fey
and Maya Rudolph, the two
others who first joined in 2000, stayed six and nine seasons; Minor
was gone after one, and he is the only one of the three who has not
come back to host. He is one of the people
whose time in the cast adds up to a single season, and one of 58
credited as writers. His exit in 2001 was one of two that year, with
Molly Shannon's, and four
newcomers arrived.
Nine seasons and an extraordinary range: Donatella Versace,
Beyoncé, and much later, returning as a host, Kamala Harris. One of
very few cast members whose post-show work has kept a continuous
working relationship with the programme.
Her nine seasons outlasted both people who
first joined with her in 2000,
Tina Fey by three and
Jerry Minor by eight, and
put her among 16 people with nine or more. She left in 2007 as the
writers' strike began, and hers was the only run in the cast to end
that year; nobody new joined in 2007 either. Between 2001 and 2006,
13 people joined the cast for the first time.
The show's first female head writer, from 1999, and the person who
turned Weekend Update from an anchor's monologue into a two-hander.
She wrote Mean Girls while employed here and made 30
Rock out of the experience of running the place. Her Sarah Palin
impression in 2008, performed as a returning host, is the single most
politically consequential thing the show has ever aired.
Of the three people who first joined in 2000,
Jerry Minor lasted a single
season and Maya Rudolph
nine; Fey's six sit between them, and she and Rudolph have both come
back to host. Her years at the Update desk spanned two partnerships,
with Jimmy Fallon from
2000 and Amy Poehler from
2004. She is one of the 58 cast
members also credited as writers, and one of 53 people with six
or more seasons.
Anchored Update first with Tina Fey and then with Seth Meyers, and
was a founding member of the Upright Citizens Brigade before either.
Kaitlin, Amber, and one of the two or three most influential
improvisers of her generation.
Her promotion to repertory came in January
2002, within months of her arrival in a 2001 intake of four that
also brought Seth Meyers,
Jeff Richards and
Dean Edwards. Of the four,
only Meyers stayed longer than her eight seasons. Hers was the one
run to end in 2008, when she left in December after maternity leave,
in a year that brought four newcomers. Of the 11 people with exactly
eight seasons, she is one of five who have come back to host.
Two seasons as a featured player, best known here for his Eddie
Murphy and his Denzel Washington.
Edwards joined in 2001 in the same premiere as
Seth Meyers and
Jeff Richards, and
Amy Poehler made that
year's intake four. Meyers went on to 13 seasons and Poehler to
eight; Edwards's two were the fewest of the group. He left in 2003
alongside two longer-serving cast members,
Chris Kattan and
Tracy Morgan.
Drunk Girl, and a run of impressions across three seasons before an
abrupt mid-run departure.
His departure midway through season 29, in
January 2004, made that a year of only two exits, his and
Jimmy Fallon's, with a
single newcomer arriving. Of the four people who first joined in
2001, Richards outlasted only
Dean Edwards:
Amy Poehler stayed eight
seasons and Seth Meyers 13.
Four people joined the cast for the first time in 2002 and 2003.
Thirteen seasons, head writer for eight of them, and the Update
anchor for the longest stretch anyone had held to that point. He left
to host Late Night, where the monologue segments are
recognisably the same job continued by other means.
He outlasted the rest of his 2001 intake by
five seasons, Amy Poehler
having left after eight. Among the
long-stayers, only three people have more than his 13:
Darrell Hammond, and
Colin Jost and
Kenan Thompson, who are
still adding to theirs. Michael
Che has also reached 13 so far. Between 2002 and 2013, 29 people
joined the cast for the first time, and his exit in 2014 was one of
six that year, four of them after a single season.
Eleven seasons of characters (Nicholas Fehn, Garth and Kat, a very
long-running Barack Obama) that were rarely built for the
catchphrase. He made Portlandia with Carrie Brownstein while
still in the cast.
Only two people first joined the cast in 2002,
Armisen and Will Forte, and
they joined 13 people who were already in the cast. Both went on to
long runs and both have come back to host, though Armisen's 11
seasons outlasted Forte's eight and make him one of nine people with
11 or more. Between 2003 and 2012, 21 people joined the cast for the
first time, and he left in 2013 alongside
Bill Hader and
Jason Sudeikis.
MacGruber, Tim Calhoun, the Falconer. The show's most reliable
engine of committed absurdity in the years after Ferrell left, and
later the star of one of the strangest network sitcoms ever
made.
He arrived with
Fred Armisen as season 28
began, the whole of the 2002 intake, into a cast that already held
13 people. Forte's eight seasons put him among 11 people with
exactly eight, five of whom have come back to host, him included.
His exit in 2010 was one of only two that year, the other being
Jenny Slate's after a
single season, while four people joined.
Three seasons, Starkisha, and a stand-up career before and
since.
One of the two people who first joined in 2003
is still in the cast: Kenan
Thompson, who arrived with Mitchell as season 29 began and has
24 seasons so far. Mitchell stayed three, which puts him among 95
people with three or more. His run was among those NBC budget cuts
ended in 2006, with Chris
Parnell's and Horatio
Sanz's; Rachel Dratch
and Tina Fey also left, so
five runs ended that year and none began.
The longest-serving cast member in the history of the show, by a
margin of ten seasons. He arrived from Nickelodeon at 25 and has now
been in the cast longer than the entire original run of the Not Ready
for Prime Time Players, the Doumanian season, and the Ebersol years
combined. What he does is not really impressions or characters so
much as a kind of load-bearing generosity: he makes other people's
sketches work.
Every one of the 16 other people in today's
cast of 17 arrived in a later year, and none of the 12 already there
when he joined in 2003 remains. His intake was just two:
Finesse Mitchell left
after three seasons. So far 61 people have joined the cast for the
first time in the years since he arrived, and no one else on the
roster has stayed as long as his
24 seasons, a count that already includes the season now under way.
One season, followed by The Daily Show and a long film
career, all of it alongside twenty-three years as a Marine Corps
officer.
Riggle made up the whole of the 2004 intake,
since nobody else first joined the cast that year, arriving as
season 30 began to join 12 people who were already there. His time
adds up to a single season, and he is not among the seven such
people who have come back to host. The year he left, 2005, shows how
hiring comes in waves: his was the only
run to end, and four new people joined.
Arrived with Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone as The Lonely Island
and, in December 2005, put "Lazy Sunday" on the air and then on
YouTube, which is roughly when the show's relationship with the
internet began. Seven seasons and more than a hundred Digital
Shorts.
Stefon, Vinny Vedecci, and an anxiety about live performance that he
has described in unusual detail since. One of the show's great
impressionists, and in Barry the source of one of the best
post-SNL careers anyone has had.
Each of the four people who first joined in
2005 has since come back to host.
Hader arrived with Andy
Samberg in October,
Kristen Wiig followed in
November, and Jason
Sudeikis had come in near the end of the previous season; in
2006 all four were promoted to repertory together. Only Sudeikis
stayed longer than Hader's eight seasons, and the two of them left
in 2013 along with Fred
Armisen.
Nine seasons as the cast's most dependable straight man and utility
player: the devil, Joe Biden, the guy in the sketch who reacts.
Later Ted Lasso.
He got a head start on the rest of the 2005
intake, joining near the end of season 30, months before
Bill Hader,
Andy Samberg and
Kristen Wiig arrived that
autumn. He also outlasted them: nine seasons, to Hader's eight and
seven apiece for the other two, which puts him among 16 people with
nine or more. Between 2006 and 2012, 14 more people joined the cast
for the first time.
Gilly, Target Lady, Dooneese, Penelope. The dominant performer of
her seven seasons, to the point that the standard criticism of
her (that the characters were built on escalating irritation) is
really a criticism of how often the show reached for them. She wrote
and starred in Bridesmaids while still in the cast.
She was the last of the four 2005 arrivals to
reach the cast, in November, and found 12 people from earlier years
already in place, among them
Amy Poehler,
Tina Fey and
Seth Meyers. Her seven
seasons matched Andy
Samberg's exactly, and they left together in 2012. Like all four
people who first joined in 2005, she has come back to host.
Four seasons, and the daughter of Chris Elliott, which makes them
the show's only parent-and-child pair of cast members.
She and
Michaela Watkins
joined together in November 2008, partway into season 34, making an
intake of four with Bobby
Moynihan and Casey
Wilson. Of those four, only Moynihan outlasted her four seasons,
and none of them has come back to host. Her run ended in 2012
alongside those of Andy
Samberg, Kristen Wiig
and Paul Brittain;
between 2009 and 2011, six people joined the cast for the first
time.
Drunk Uncle, Second-Hand News. Nine seasons of being the person who
could take a thin premise and make it land through sheer
specificity.
His nine seasons left the rest of the 2008
intake far behind: Abby
Elliott managed four,
Casey Wilson two and
Michaela Watkins one.
Moynihan stayed long enough to see 25 people join the cast for the
first time between 2009 and 2016, and his total places him among 16
people with nine or more, level with
Maya Rudolph and
Jason Sudeikis among
others. He left at the 2017 finale with
Vanessa Bayer and
Sasheer Zamata.
Two seasons as a featured player, then a considerably more
successful run as a writer and actor: Happy Endings, and a
long-running podcast.
Her arrival in February 2008, as the show
returned from the writers' strike partway through season 33, is why
a run that ended in 2009 counts as two seasons; mid-season hires are
one of the edge cases in how
this site counts. The calendar also puts her in the 2008 intake
with Bobby Moynihan,
Abby Elliott and
Michaela Watkins, who
all arrived that autumn. She and Watkins left together in 2009;
Elliott stayed four seasons and Moynihan nine.
One season, ended by a mid-year cut she has since discussed with
unusual grace. Her subsequent television work, particularly
Casual, is much stronger than anything the show let her
show.
Her single season ended in 2009 alongside two
very different runs: Casey
Wilson, who had arrived the same year she did, left after two,
and Darrell Hammond
after 14. Watkins joined in November 2008 with
Abby Elliott, and of that
year's four arrivals she was the only one to last a single season.
She is one of the people whose time adds
up to one season.
Said a word she should not have in her first sketch on her first
episode, and was not renewed at the end of the season: two facts she
has always maintained were not the same fact. She made Marcel the
Shell the following year and has had a far better career than the
anecdote suggests.
Only two people joined the cast for the first
time in 2009, and the pair went opposite ways:
Nasim Pedrad stayed for
five seasons, Slate for one. They came into a cast of ten already in
place, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader and Andy Samberg among them. When
she left in 2010, the only other run to end that year was Will
Forte's, after eight seasons. She is one of the
people whose whole tenure comes to a
single season.
Five seasons, and the show's first Iranian-American cast member.
Bedelia, and a very good Kim Kardashian.
Of the ten people already in the cast when she
arrived in 2009, only Seth Meyers, Bobby Moynihan and Kenan Thompson
were still there in her final season; between 2010 and 2013, 14
people joined the cast for the first time. Her own intake was just
two, herself and Jenny
Slate, who was gone after a season. Pedrad left in 2014, a year
in which six runs ended, four of them one-season runs from the
intake of the previous autumn.
One of the most technically accurate impressionists the show has
employed (his Obama, his Denzel, and his Jay-Z were close to
exact), and one who has said publicly that the show declined to use
most of what he could do.
Six seasons puts Pharoah level with Tina Fey,
Jimmy Fallon and David Spade, and with
Taran Killam, who was
hired alongside him in 2010 and left at the same finale in 2016. The
other two hired that year were
Vanessa Bayer, who stayed
for seven seasons, and
Paul Brittain, who left
midway through his second. None of the four is in the cast today,
and none has come back to host.
Sir Lord Anthony Carnegie-Hall, and a mid-season departure that was
never explained publicly in much detail.
He was the first of the 2010 intake to leave,
and the only one of its four members who did not stay into a sixth
season: Vanessa Bayer
lasted seven, Taran Killam
and Jay Pharoah six each.
His exit in January 2012 came in a year when four runs ended; the
other three were Kristen Wiig's and Andy Samberg's, after seven
seasons each, and Abby Elliott's after four. Nobody new joined the
cast while he was in it.
Six seasons and enormous range, including a Donald Trump impression
he lost when the 2016 election made the role far too important to
leave with a departing cast member.
He and
Jay Pharoah came in
together in 2010 and went out together at the 2016 finale, each with
six seasons;
Jon Rudnitsky made it
three exits that year, and three newcomers arrived that autumn. Of
the four hired in 2010, only
Vanessa Bayer stayed
longer. Across his run, 16 people joined the cast for the first
time, Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong and both of today's Weekend
Update anchors among them.
Jacob the Bar Mitzvah Boy, Laura Parsons, and a Miley Cyrus that
outlived its subject's relevance. Seven seasons of unusual
precision.
Seven seasons, the same total as Will Ferrell
and Kristen Wiig, made her the longest-lasting of the four people
who first joined in 2010, none of whom was gone after one season:
Taran Killam and
Jay Pharoah stayed six,
Paul Brittain two.
Between 2011 and 2016, 19 newcomers joined the cast. She left at the
2017 finale with Bobby Moynihan, after nine seasons, and
Sasheer Zamata, after
four.
2012–present: the political era and the institution
The most politically saturated decade the show has
had, and the most stable. That held until 2022, when a group of people
who had all joined within a year of each other hit ten years within a
year of each other, and the cast emptied out again.
Aidy Bryant
2012–2022 · 10 seasons
Ten seasons of comic warmth deployed against material that was
frequently much darker than it looked. She made Shrill while
in the cast, and left in the 2022 exodus.
Her ten seasons equal Tim Meadows's and put her
among the long stayers, yet of
the 2012 arrivals who stayed she had the shortest run:
Kate McKinnon and
Cecily Strong each
reached 11. She, McKinnon and Strong all left in 2022, when nine
runs in the cast ended and only four began, with Kyle Mooney, Pete
Davidson, Alex Moffat and Melissa Villaseñor among the other
departures.
Anchored Weekend Update for a season, created the Girl You Wish You
Hadn't Started a Conversation With at a Party, and in her later years
took on the show's most serious material, the Goober the Clown
abortion sketch being the clearest example of something the programme
could not have done in any earlier decade.
Cecily Strong outlasted the rest of the 2012
intake, staying on into season 48 after
Kate McKinnon and
Aidy Bryant had gone at the
spring finale, and her December exit brought the year's count of
ended runs to nine. Her 11 seasons match McKinnon's and Fred
Armisen's. The desk came early: she moved to Weekend Update in 2013,
her second season, and is one of the 24
people who have anchored it.
Eleven seasons, two Emmys, and the most decorated tenure of the
show's modern era. Her Hillary Clinton, Jeff Sessions, Rudy Giuliani,
and Ruth Bader Ginsburg defined the political period; her
non-political characters, particularly the alien abductee Colleen
Rafferty, are better.
She arrived in April 2012, months ahead of the
rest of that year's intake, and three of its four members settled in
for a decade:
Cecily Strong matched her
11 seasons, Aidy Bryant
reached ten, and only
Tim Robinson left after
one. Her total also equals Fred Armisen's. She is the one member of
that intake to have come back as host, which makes her one of the
39 cast members who returned to
host.
One season in the cast, then three in the writers' room, and then
I Think You Should Leave, the single most influential
sketch project of the last decade. The clearest case on this list of
the show being the wrong container for someone.
Three of the four people who first joined the
cast in 2012 lasted ten seasons or more,
Aidy Bryant,
Kate McKinnon and
Cecily Strong; he is the
one who did not stay. His exit in 2013 was one of four that year,
and the other three closed long runs: Fred Armisen's after 11
seasons, Jason Sudeikis's after nine and Bill Hader's after eight.
Six people joined the cast for the first time that year.
Eight seasons, including a shirtless Vladimir Putin that became one
of the show's most-used political properties, and the man in a great
many of its commercial parodies.
The 2013 intake was six strong and mostly
short-lived: four of them were gone after a single season, leaving
Bennett and Kyle Mooney,
his partner from Good Neighbor, as the two who lasted. Bennett's
eight seasons match Bill Hader's, Amy Poehler's and Phil Hartman's.
He left in 2021, a quiet year for departures, when only his run and
Lauren Holt's came to an end.
One season, cut at the end of it, and unusually frank about the
whole experience in public afterwards.
His run ended in 2014, a year of heavy turnover
at both ends of the cast: six runs finished, from Seth Meyers's 13
seasons and Nasim Pedrad's five down to the single seasons of
Wheelan, John Milhiser,
Noël Wells and
Mike O'Brien, while five
began. All four of those one-season runs came from the same intake
of six in 2013; only
Beck Bennett and
Kyle Mooney stayed on.
One season as a featured player, hired out of the Upright Citizens
Brigade.
He was one of three people let go together in
July 2014, with Noël Wells
and Brooks Wheelan, all
from the six-person intake of the previous autumn. With
Mike O'Brien also leaving
the on-air cast, four of those six lasted a single season, and 2014
ended six runs in all, Seth Meyers's and Nasim Pedrad's among them.
He is one of the people whose time in the
cast adds up to one season.
Came from the sketch group Good Neighbor with Beck Bennett and made
pre-taped pieces that were closer to found footage than to sketches.
Nine seasons of the strangest material on the show.
Where
John Milhiser,
Mike O'Brien,
Noël Wells and
Brooks Wheelan each
lasted one season, Mooney lasted nine, the most of the six who first
joined in 2013 and one more than
Beck Bennett. That total
matches Maya Rudolph's, Jason Sudeikis's and Bobby Moynihan's.
Between 2014 and 2021, 21 people joined the cast for the first time,
and when he left in 2022, eight other runs ended with his.
A writer for several years either side of his single season in the
cast, and responsible for a great many of the show's most peculiar
filmed pieces.
The last of the 2013 intake's one-season
members to go, he left the on-air cast as season 40 began rather
than at the end of season 39, two months after
John Milhiser,
Noël Wells and
Brooks Wheelan were let
go. His writing credit puts him among the
58 cast members also credited as
writers, a group that also takes in
Tim Robinson, the
one-season member of the intake a year before his.
One season, then Master of None and a career as a
writer-director.
Wells came in with five other newcomers in
2013, into a cast of ten that already had Kate McKinnon, Cecily
Strong and Aidy Bryant, and Seth Meyers near the end of his run. Six
runs began that year and four ended. Of the six,
Kyle Mooney and
Beck Bennett went on to
nine and eight seasons; Wells's run, like three others from that
autumn, ended after one.
Head writer at 27, and Weekend Update anchor since 2014, the
longest run at the desk anyone has had. His partnership with Michael
Che, now over a decade old, is the most durable pairing in the
segment's history.
He arrived in March 2014, partway through a
season, and is one of two people from that year's intake of five
still in the cast, the other being his Update partner
Michael Che;
Pete Davidson,
Leslie Jones and
Sasheer Zamata have all
since left. Kenan Thompson is the only person from before his
arrival still in the cast. So far 31 people have joined for the
first time in the years since, and his 14 seasons so far have
reached Darrell
Hammond's total; both are among
the long stayers.
Hired as a writer at 47 and moved to the cast, which makes her one
of the oldest people ever hired and the one with the longest stand-up
career behind her. Five seasons of a stage presence the show's format
could barely contain.
Hers was the only run in the cast to end in
2019, a year in which two began. She had arrived in October 2014,
joining an intake of five in which nobody lasted just one season and
two, Colin Jost and
Michael Che, are still in
the cast. Her five seasons sit between
Sasheer Zamata's four
and Pete Davidson's
eight, and between 2015 and 2018, eight people joined the cast for
the first time.
The first Black Weekend Update anchor in the show's history, which
took thirty-nine years to arrive. Co-head writer, and one half of a
desk act built on the two anchors visibly disagreeing with each
other.
Che and
Colin Jost are the two
members of the 2014 intake still in today's cast, though they
arrived months apart: Jost in March, partway through a season, and
Che that September alongside
Pete Davidson for season
40. Of the others in today's cast of 17, 14 arrived after him. His
13 seasons so far have reached
Seth Meyers's total, and he
is one of the 24 people who have anchored
Weekend Update.
Joined at 20, the youngest cast member since Anthony Michael Hall,
and spent eight seasons doing an unusually autobiographical version
of the job: his father, a firefighter, died in the September 11
attacks, and he has talked about it on air. The tabloid attention his
tenure attracted was on a scale no cast member had experienced
before.
He is the only member of the 2014 intake who
has come back to host, one of the 39
cast members who have. Eight seasons put him level with Bill
Hader, Amy Poehler and Will Forte, and with
Beck Bennett, hired a year
before him. Of the five people who first joined in 2014, he stayed
longer than Leslie Jones
and Sasheer Zamata, and
not as long as Colin Jost
and Michael Che, who are
both still there.
Hired mid-season in January 2014, after the show's failure to cast a
Black woman became a national story. She has been consistently
gracious about the circumstances and consistently clear about how
strange they were.
Arriving in January 2014 put her in the same
intake as four people hired later that year,
Colin Jost,
Michael Che,
Pete Davidson and
Leslie Jones, none of whom
lasted just one season and two of whom are still in the cast. Her
four seasons are the fewest of the five, and they fit inside the
years 2014 to 2017 because she started mid-season, one of the ways
year spans and season counts
can disagree. She left at the 2017 finale with Vanessa Bayer and
Bobby Moynihan.
One season as a featured player, hired out of stand-up and not
renewed.
Nobody else joined the cast for the first time
in 2015, and no run ended that year, so he came in as the only
newcomer to a cast of 15, an unusual arrival in a show that has
mostly hired in waves. He went out at the
2016 finale with
Taran Killam and
Jay Pharoah, six seasons
apiece, and that autumn brought three newcomers.
Eric Trump, Guy Who Just Bought a Boat, and six seasons of
impressions in a period that required a great many of them.
The three people who first joined in 2016 moved
through the cast in step: all were hired that September, all were
promoted to repertory in
2018, and
Melissa Villaseñor
and Moffat both finished on six seasons, leaving together ahead of
season 48. Only Mikey Day is
still in the cast. Twelve people joined for the first time while
Moffat was there, and nine runs ended in the year he left.
The show's first Latina cast member, an impressionist with an
unusually large catalogue, and a musician besides.
Her arrival in 2016 was part of an even
exchange: three runs ended that year,
Taran Killam's,
Jay Pharoah's and
Jon Rudnitsky's, and
three began, hers,
Mikey Day's and
Alex Moffat's. Her six
seasons equal Moffat's, and Ana Gasteyer's and Victoria Jackson's
before them. She left in 2022 ahead of season 48, in a year that
also took Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, Cecily Strong, Kyle Mooney and
Pete Davidson out of the cast.
Writer first and performer second, and one of very few people to
hold both jobs at a high level for a decade. A great deal of the
show's most reliably constructed sketch writing of the last ten years
is his.
Of today's cast of 17, only Kenan Thompson,
Colin Jost and Michael Che were there before him; the other 13 have
all arrived since, and 27 newcomers in all have joined in the years
since he arrived. He is the one member of the 2016 intake still in
the cast, Alex Moffat and
Melissa Villaseñor
having left after six seasons each. His 11 seasons so far have
reached the totals of Kate McKinnon and Cecily Strong, and he is one
of the 58 cast members also
credited as writers.
Eight seasons and a character catalogue (Bailey Gismert, Angel the
boxer's girlfriend) built on very precise observation of very
specific kinds of person.
Of the three people who arrived in 2017 she
lasted longest, three seasons beyond
Chris Redd and seven beyond
Luke Null. Her eight seasons
put her level with ten other people,
Bill Hader,
Amy Poehler and
Will Forte among them, and
make her one of 27 with eight or more. Between 2018 and 2024, 17
people joined the cast for the first time, and her firing in 2025
came in a year when six runs ended and five began.
Three runs ended in 2017 and three began, so
the intake that brought Null in with
Heidi Gardner and
Chris Redd did little more
than fill the gaps. Of the three he was the one who did not stay:
Gardner went on to eight seasons and Redd to five. His exit and
Ego Nwodim's hiring were the
only runs to end or begin in 2018, and his time in the cast adds up
to a single season.
Seven seasons, and in the later ones the cast member most often
handed the sketch that simply had to work. Lisa from Temecula.
Nobody else joined the cast in 2018, so she
arrived alone, into a group of 15 that already included
Kate McKinnon,
Cecily Strong and
Kenan Thompson. Her
seven seasons match those of
Will Ferrell and
Kristen Wiig, and, from
her own time in the cast, Bowen
Yang and Chloe
Fineman; 40 people have seven or more. She left in 2025, one of
six departures that year.
The first Chinese-American cast member in the show's history and the
first featured player ever nominated for an Emmy for performing. The
iceberg that sank the Titanic, which is the sort of premise that only
works if the performer treats it as completely serious.
Yang is one of 58 people the roster credits as
writers as well as performers,
and with seven seasons one of 40 people who reached seven or more.
He and Chloe Fineman, the
only two arrivals of 2019, finished level. His leaving in December
2025, partway through a season, made his the last of six runs to end
that calendar year, after a late summer in which
Heidi Gardner,
Ego Nwodim and three others
had already gone.
An impressionist of unusual range, particularly of other actors,
which is a harder and considerably less rewarded skill than
impersonating politicians.
The 2019 intake was just two people, Fineman
and Bowen Yang, and it moved
as a pair: promoted together in 2021, both finishing with seven
seasons. Between 2020 and 2025, 19 people joined the cast for the
first time. Of those already there when she arrived, only
Kenan Thompson,
Colin Jost,
Michael Che and
Mikey Day outlasted her. Hers
was the only run to end in 2026, the year
Saidah Belo-Osagie
and Grace Reiter arrived.
A writer first and then cast, and one of the performers who came up
entirely inside the show rather than arriving with a reputation.
No run in the cast ended in 2020, so the three
people hired that year joined a cast that
could only get bigger. Dismukes
is the one of the three still there:
Lauren Holt left after a
season and Punkie
Johnson after four. In today's cast of 17, in season 52, only
four people have more seasons than his seven so far, and all four
were already in the cast when he arrived.
One season, hired into the pandemic year, when the show was being
made under conditions nobody had ever tried before.
Her intake, the three people hired in 2020,
arrived without anyone leaving to make room: no run in the cast
ended that year. Holt's was the one of the three that stopped after
a single season, while
Andrew Dismukes is
still in the cast and Punkie
Johnson stayed four seasons. When she left in 2021 only one
other run ended, Beck
Bennett's after eight seasons, and three people were hired:
Aristotle Athari,
James Austin
Johnson and Sarah
Sherman.
Four seasons, and a departure of her own choosing, which is rarer
on this list than it ought to be.
Four seasons sits in the middle of her 2020
intake: longer than Lauren
Holt's one, shorter than
Andrew Dismukes's run,
which is still going. Between 2021 and 2023, eight people joined the
cast for the first time. Her exit in 2024 was one of three that
year, alongside Molly
Kearney's and Chloe
Troast's, ahead of a season that brought in three new people.
She is one of 14 people with exactly four seasons.
One season as a featured player; Laughing Gas, and a background in
sketch and music.
Only one of the three people who arrived in
2021 has left, and it was Athari, after a single season;
James Austin
Johnson and Sarah
Sherman are still in the cast. He left in 2022 with
Alex Moffat and
Melissa Villaseñor,
in a year when nine runs ended,
Kate McKinnon's and
Cecily Strong's among
them, and only four began. The people hired that autumn joined a
much smaller cast than the one he had joined.
Arrived with a Donald Trump impression built out of the rhythm of
the speech rather than its vocabulary, which is why it worked when
several previous attempts had not.
He and
Sarah Sherman are the two
who remain from the 2021 intake, level with each other on six
seasons so far, while
Aristotle Athari left
after one. His six seasons so far already reach the totals of
Tina Fey,
Jimmy Fallon and
David Spade, and make him
one of 53 people with six or more. In today's cast of 17, in season
52, ten people arrived after him.
Came from the alt-comedy circuit with a body-horror sensibility
largely unprecedented on network television, and is now in her
sixth season of getting it on the air anyway.
Of the 18 people already in the cast when
Sherman arrived in 2021, five are still there alongside her. So is
James Austin
Johnson, hired the same year; the two were promoted to repertory
together in 2023. Only
Aristotle Athari, the
third arrival of 2021, has gone. Fifteen people have joined the cast
for the first time since she did, and with six seasons so far she
has caught up with the full runs of
Ana Gasteyer and
Taran Killam.
Broke through quickly: Domingo, and a run of sketches about Cuban
and Dominican family life that the show had never really had
before.
Hernández arrived in 2022 as one of four new
hires, in a year when nine runs in the cast ended. Of that intake he
is the only one still there:
Molly Kearney left after
two seasons, and Michael
Longfellow and Devon
Walker, promoted with him in 2024, after three. Seven people who
were in the cast before him remain alongside him in today's cast of
17, in season 52.
Three seasons; a stand-up whose Weekend Update appearances were the
best use the show found for him.
Longfellow and
Devon Walker ran in step:
hired together in 2022, promoted together in 2024, and gone in the
same month of 2025, each after three seasons. That is the total
Chris Rock and
Jim Breuer finished with
too. Four people joined the cast for the first time in 2023 and
2024, and his exit was one of six in 2025, a year in which five
people were hired.
The show's first openly non-binary cast member, across two
seasons.
Kearney came in with the four-person intake of
2022, a year in which nine runs ended, and had the shortest run of
the group: Marcello
Hernández is still in the cast, and
Michael Longfellow
and Devon Walker each
stayed three seasons. Only one person joined the cast for the first
time during those two seasons,
Chloe Troast, and both of
them left in 2024, as did
Punkie Johnson. Kearney
is one of 15 people who finished with exactly two seasons.
One season, not renewed, and unusually open about having been
surprised by it.
She was the whole of the 2023 intake, the one
person hired that year, and no run in the cast ended in 2023 to make
room for her. The 16 people already there had all been in the cast
at least a season. Hers ended in 2024 alongside the runs of
Punkie Johnson and
Molly Kearney, and one of
the three people hired that year,
Emil Wakim, also had a
single season.
Hired out of the Groundlings into the fiftieth season.
She joined in 2024 with
Jane Wickline and
Emil Wakim. Wakim's run ended
after one season; Padilla and Wickline both stayed on. Of the 14 people already in the cast when she
arrived, eight are still there. Of today's cast of 17, in season 52,
eight have more seasons than her three so far, Wickline has the same,
and seven arrived after her.
One season, hired out of stand-up into the fiftieth-anniversary
year.
The three hires of 2024 matched the three
departures that year, and Wakim is the one of that intake no longer
in the cast: Ashley
Padilla and Jane
Wickline are both in today's cast. Nobody joined the cast for
the first time during his season. He was one of six people whose
runs ended in 2025, and the other five,
Heidi Gardner and
Ego Nwodim among them, had
all been in the cast for years.
A musical comedian who reached the show largely through material she
had made and posted herself, which is a route into the cast that did
not exist twenty years ago.
Wickline arrived in 2024, hired for season 50
in a year when three runs ended and three began, so the intake of
Ashley Padilla,
Emil Wakim and her was a
like-for-like replacement. Two of those three are still in the cast;
Wakim left after a season. Seven people have joined for the first
time since she did, and her three seasons so far have already
reached the totals of
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
and Mark McKinney.
One third of Please Don't Destroy, the in-house filmmaking trio who
spent several years making the show's short films before he joined
the cast proper.
Marshall is the only one of the five people
hired in 2025 whom the roster also credits as a writer, which puts
him among the 58 cast members with
a writing credit. He and the other four,
Kam Patterson and
Veronika
Slowikowska among them, arrived in a year when six runs ended,
and all five are still in the cast in season 52.
Hired as a featured player for the fifty-first season.
Five people were hired as featured players in
2025, Culhane with Tommy
Brennan, Ben Marshall,
Kam Patterson and
Veronika
Slowikowska, and none of them has left. In today's cast of 17
the five sit together on two seasons so far; ten of their castmates
have more, and only the two people hired since have fewer.
A stand-up who came up largely through the podcast circuit, hired as
a featured player for the fifty-first season.
Of the people already in the cast when
Patterson and the other featured players of 2025 arrived, from
Kenan Thompson to the
two most recent hires,
Ashley Padilla and
Jane Wickline, ten are
still there; Bowen Yang left
that December and Chloe
Fineman the following summer. Two people have joined for the
first time since, and Patterson and his fellow hires,
Tommy Brennan among them,
are all in today's cast.
A Canadian performer with a substantial body of self-made
short-form comedy behind her, hired as a featured player for the
fifty-first season.
Two seasons so far put Slowikowska among the
115 people who have reached two or more; the other 59 on the roster
have exactly one. She came in with the five featured players of
2025, Jeremy Culhane and
Ben Marshall among them,
and in today's cast of 17, in season 52, ten people arrived before
that group and two after it.
A Nigerian-American character comedian from Queens, and the creator
of the solo show Saidah Gets Closure, hired as a featured
player for the fifty-second season.
Belo-Osagie and
Grace Reiter are the new
featured players of season 52, and the only people to join the cast
for the first time in 2026. The five hired the year before,
Tommy Brennan and
Kam Patterson among them,
are all still in the cast, so more than a third of today's cast of
17 are in their first or second season.
A sketch comedian from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, who built a large
online following with self-made sketches and American High shorts,
hired as a featured player for the fifty-second season.
Reiter's intake is two people, her and
Saidah Belo-Osagie,
both hired as featured players for season 52. They joined a settled
group: all 15 people already in the cast came back, and the only run
to end in 2026 was Chloe
Fineman's, before the season began. In today's cast of 17, those
15 all have more seasons than her one so far.
Dates and tenures come from
Wikipedia; the writing above is our
own. Corrections, especially about the performers there is least
published material on, are genuinely welcome at
info@snlroster.com.