Everything below was computed from the roster on this site rather than looked up somewhere: 174 cast members across fifty-two seasons, counting season 52, whose premiere was set for 26 September 2026. Where a number here disagrees with one you have read elsewhere, the usual reason is that the other source is counting episodes and this one is counting seasons.
Tenure
Kenan Thompson has been in the cast for 24 seasons, which is ten more than anyone else has ever managed. Darrell Hammond and Colin Jost are tied for second at fourteen; Michael Che and Seth Meyers are tied at thirteen. Thompson joined in 2003, meaning he has now been on the show longer than the entire original run of the Not Ready for Prime Time Players, the Doumanian season, and the Ebersol years put together.
The median cast member lasts three seasons; the average is four. That gap is the whole story of the roster. Eleven people have served ten seasons or more, and they pull the mean upward against a very large group at the other end: 59 of the 174, better than a third, appeared in exactly one season and never came back.
Forty-nine people were never promoted past featured player. That is 28% of everyone ever hired: they arrived in the smaller credit, spent one or two years there, and left without reaching the repertory company.
Only four people have ever had more than one separate stint in the cast: Al Franken, Harry Shearer, Don Novello, and Brian Doyle-Murray. Franken's three stints span sixteen years, from 1979 to 1995, the longest gap between a first and last appearance of anyone on the roster who was not continuously employed.
Churn
1980 was the great emptying: fifteen people left in a single year. That is the original company going at the end of season five, cast and writer-performers together, and it remains the largest exodus in the show's history. The second largest was 1995, with twelve, the clear-out that followed season twenty. The Jean Doumanian purge that everyone remembers as the collapse is 1981, and at ten it is only joint third, level with 1985 and 1986. Fifteen turns up again in the next paragraph as the largest ever intake, which is not a duplication: season five's company left and season six's was hired inside the one calendar year.
1980 was the largest single intake, at fifteen new people. 1985 was second with twelve, and almost all of them were gone within a year. That was the celebrity-hire experiment that nearly got the show cancelled.
The cast has twice reached 25 people in a season, in 1980 and again in 2022. The smallest casts were the earliest: seven people carried the show for three seasons running, from 1976 to 1978.
The experience curve
The most interesting thing in the data is not a record, it is a slope. The average tenure of the cast has risen by about 0.8 seasons per decade, every decade, since 1975. Fit a straight line through every season and it starts at roughly 2.0 seasons of experience in 1975 and reaches 6.0 by 2026.
The lowest point was 1981, when the average cast member had 1.6 seasons behind them, the year after everyone experienced had left at once. The highest point is right now: the cast credited in 2026 averages 6.2 years in the job, the most experienced company the show has ever credited. That figure counts calendar years from a person's first season to the current one, which is the only measure a year-by-year chart can draw. It usually runs ahead of the sourced season counts used elsewhere on this site, and the methodology page sets out why the two disagree. For this cast they happen to meet: on sourced seasons the same group also averages 6.2.
Whether that is maturity or ossification is genuinely arguable, and both readings point at the same line. You can see it on the roster page, with the dashed trend drawn through it.
Roles
Twenty-four people have anchored Weekend Update. The desk has changed hands more often than any other job on the programme (seven different anchors in the six seasons between 1980 and 1986 alone) and then almost stopped moving: Colin Jost and Michael Che both joined the cast in 2014 and are both still in it. That the two of them have anchored together throughout is general knowledge rather than something this file records, which stores only a bare true or false against the twenty-four; the piece on the desk sets out what the flag can and cannot settle.
Thirty-nine former cast members have come back to host, which is roughly one in five. Fifty-eight were credited as writers as well as performers. That is a third of the roster, and a reminder that for much of the show's history the line between the two jobs was administrative rather than real.
Twelve questions
Answers are printed underneath each question. If your browser is running JavaScript they will be hidden until you pick, and you will get a score at the end.
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Who has served the most seasons in the cast?
Kenan Thompson, with 24 seasons since 2003. That is ten more than Darrell Hammond, who held the record before him.
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Which cast member appeared in exactly one episode, then went on to win three Tony Awards?
Laurie Metcalf. A writers' strike ended the 1981 season after her first episode, giving her the shortest tenure of anyone ever credited.
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Who is the oldest person ever hired into the cast?
Michael McKean, who joined in 1994 at 46. Leslie Jones was 47 when she started writing for the show but was already on staff before moving to the cast.
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Which cast member was fired mid-season for deliberately changing a character during a live broadcast?
Damon Wayans, in 1986. Rocket and Slate were both undone by saying a word on air rather than by playing a part differently, and Macdonald was removed from Weekend Update but stayed in the cast.
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How many people have anchored Weekend Update?
Twenty-four, starting with Chevy Chase in 1975. Seven of them held the desk in the six seasons between 1980 and 1986 alone.
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Which cast member later served in the United States Senate?
Al Franken, elected for Minnesota in 2008. He is the only cast member ever sworn into federal office.
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Who was the first Black anchor of Weekend Update?
Michael Che, in 2014, thirty-nine years after the desk was created.
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Which year saw the most cast members leave at once?
1995, when twelve went in the clear-out after season twenty. 1981, the Jean Doumanian collapse, is only ten, and 2022 is nine. The biggest year of all is not one of the four offered: 1980, when fifteen left at the end of season five.
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Which two cast members are parent and child?
Chris and Abby Elliott. The other three pairs are all siblings; the show has hired a surprising number of brothers.
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How many of the 174 cast members lasted exactly one season?
Fifty-nine, better than a third of everyone ever hired. The median run is three seasons.
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Who is the only cast member to have been fired and rehired twice?
Chris Parnell. Shearer and Franken both had multiple stints, but neither was let go and brought back twice over.
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The average experience level of the cast has risen steadily since 1975. By roughly how much per decade?
About 0.8 seasons per decade. A straight-line fit runs from roughly 2.0 seasons of average experience in 1975 to 6.0 in 2026. The 2026 cast averages 6.2 years in the job, the highest figure the show has ever recorded.
Cast dates come from Wikipedia; every count and average on this page was computed from them by this site. Found an error? info@snlroster.com.