Speculation: Cast Member to Leave SNL

I know it’s a really popular thing to trash these people on DL - but I hope that none of them leave.

Please let it be the one-note, unfunny Kenan Thompson. Aidy Bryant is also painful to watch. It's like your fat cousin from Nebraska is on stage doing improv and voices.

I don’t care at all, as long as I’ve got my cute Andrew Dismukes to fuck.

R2 Kenan is the only funny one left

Why is the cast changing their loom? Isn't that what they use to make their costumes?

I love Aidy. She does a mean Ethel Merman.

Kenan can make a sketch funny just by walking on stage, that's how good he is.

Something going on….. I know there’s something going on…..

Why can’t Lorne leave instead?

Keep Beck, Kenan, Cecily, Chloe and that's all. I had high hopes for Bowen Yang in the beginning. I thought he was funny, but they only cast him as the typical femme gaysian which is a waste. He can go, Addy can go, and Kate can go.

Bowen Yang is a very funny and talented guy. But the problem is that he’s angry and TENSE and it is starting to really show through.

He either needs to write better material for himself or they need to let him be more multi-faceted. Maybe he's angry b/c he's stuck playing the same thing all the time and can't show his range.

I've NEVER found Kenan Thompson funny. The person that called him "one note" hit the nail on it's head.

And I'll never understand how he became rich & famous while his much funnier, more talented and handsome former partner Kel Mitchell was left to wallow in obscurity. Showbusiness is strange.

He got rick being the token black guy for every POC role, just like Maya. Although I do think he can be funny depending on the skit.

Keenan can't even walk on-set without cracking up. His game show skits were always fun, though.

Cecily Strong will be missed. She's terrific.

And Kate? Sidekick in films? What else will she do? From Whiskers are We lady to RGB and Ghouliani, her characters and impressions have become better over the years,

If there's any justice, it should be "cast members." SNL is bloated, which isn't a new problem, but it feels especially awful when the senior cast members all have side hustles. Having your own show should immediately mean you're no longer on SNL.

I think Heidi is great.

It's a TV show, R16, not the NBA.

I’m going to miss Cecily & Kate the most, I could tell by their tears that they’re definitely leaving. Heidi & Chloe are fabulous & will probably given more to do, so the loss won’t be so palpable.

I hope that Kate goes. She has overstayed. Will miss Cecily and Aidy if they go. I think Heidi, Chloe, and Ego are capable of carrying the female torch just fine. Love Mikey and hope he stays.

What about Beck? I hope he's not going.

R3 I wanna fuck Andrew Dismukes so bad!

Ugh, is Kenan STILL there?

That Judge Jeannine skit made it pretty clear Cecily was leaving.....and though she was soaking wet, you could tell she was crying at the end.

I think it’s Cecile, too. She has a book coming out this fall and she’s been looking for other projects.

I'd really like Kate to go.

I am sick of her playing gleeful old wizened men in every episode--it's really creepy.

Maybe it’s Punky Brewster or Lauren Holt who’s thinking of leaving?

It will be Aidy Bryant.

Cancel this unfunny shit already. Bring back Mad TV.

Rumor is AIDS is getting fired for trying to lead a cast revolt and walk-out two weeks ago to protest Elon Musk.

Aidy is the most woke of them all. She must live on caffeine to be so woke all the time!

Being on SNL for many years is nothing to crow about, it means you can't move on to bigger and better things, as is the case for Kenan.

I really loved Kate and Aidy when they first arrived, both doing a lot of funny stuff. But I feel like the creative well for both of them has run dry and they are doing variations on older characters. With that said, loved the 'whiskers are we' semi-closeted lesbian and Aidy's pre-teen girl who was always trying to seduce her friend's dads.

The article isn't suggesting a single cast member is going, it could be Aidy, Kate, Cecily, Pete AND Kenan.

[quote] Maybe he's angry b/c he's stuck playing the same thing all the time and can't show his range.

Maybe he has no range.

The ones going are Alex Muppet, Mikey Day, Colin Jost, and Beck Bennett. Lily the AT&T girl is joining the cast next season.

Jost obviously thinks SNL is beneath him, now that he is married to Johannsen.

This is our country's darkest hour..

Please let it be Colin Jost. He's awful and has no business being on camera. Ever.

SNL needs a good purge about every five years or so. They’re overdue.

I can’t leave until I’m sure the marriage will stick.

Awww r42, did you sign a prenup sweetie?

Time for me to come back and write some manly comedy! Something like Stefon but not so manly.

IMO it's Aidy who can make any sketch funny by just coming on camera and the way she says lines, which is pretty cool.

Didn't everyone think Cicely was leaving last season, when they did that pre-filmed sketch where she dreamed of saying goodbye to the rest of the cast? Then she came back in a quarter of the way into this season. So I don't think she's leaving. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

The newsdesk needs a total revamping. Not only does it seem to me outrageous that there's just 2 males dominating the news co-hosting on SNL after all these decades, but also both Colin and Che and their writing suck.

I, too, wish that Lorne would leave. Or maybe the show will eventually go the way of The Tonight Show and become reduced to 1 hour. It really is the last remnant of NBC's late-night "golden age" when The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson was originally 90 minutes long on weeknights.

Bowen Yang, Beck, Cecily, Kate, Pete, Kyle, and Kenan.

Time to go...

Bring in Jon Stewart to do the newsdesk.

I hope Mikey Day stays. I find him really attractive, although he could add a few pounds.

I won't shed any tears if Jost decides to leave. He's nothing but hair and teeth.

Losing Kate, Cecily, Aidy and Kenan at the same time would hurt.

Heck, losing two of those three women would hurt. I don't know when it snuck up on me but I just love Aidy and Cecily. It would be weird having them gone.

It's time for Colin to go. I like Beck but I'd also say the same for him. The same applies to Kenan. I like him but he should have left and done something else a long time ago. He doesn't need to be another Tim Meadows. Leave while you're young enough to do other things.

As much as Datalounge hated Leslie Jones, she has continued to work while a ton of other alumni from her time on the show have fallen off the face of the Earth. I'm happy Sasheer Zamata has gone into just straight acting. That's exactly where she should be and she seems to be working quite a lot. Hopefully something will stick.

Isn’t it a big deal when a long time cast member leaves? You’d think they’d give Kate and Keenan a big send off if they were leaving.

^you know Kenyan has a network sitcom that was just renewed?

Who has fallen off the face of the earth? Sasheer works a lot? Why did she leave? And why did Leslie leave? Was she fired?

Time to Go: Aidy, Cecily, Kate

Keep: Beck, Mikey, Ego, Chloe, Heidi, Alex, Melissa, Bowen, Andrew

Lose: Kenan, Pete, Kyle, Chris, Colin, Michael, Lauren Holt, Punkie Johnson

I'm sick of Colin and Che on Weekend Update. And they've done it for 8 years now. Move on. Kenan—18 years on SNL and you have a sitcom? Move on.

Trimming the cast to the above 9 would work. Bring on 3 new featured players. I'd like to see them try a more intimate show. (The original SNL had a cast of 7, and its best eras — in the mid '80s and mid '90s — had smaller casts.) Give Chloe and Alex Weekend Update, or bring on someone new to do it. Give Melissa more to do.

Beck and Mikey would likely leave after next season.

That guy who was married to Maria from How I Met Your Mother had to leave SNL when he got a shitcom but why does Kenan get to stay?

How come someone brilliant like Cole Escola can’t get on this show?

Because “Kenan” is produced by Lorne Michaels’ company.

Every time they add new cast, they are less and less gifted at comedy. You wonder if they've even done improv.

What kind of future does Melissa VisaSenor have?

The featured players have to go unless Lorne is going to show us what they can do. We rarely see any of them. Except I really like Bowen Yang. Andrew is rarely used.

Keep Cecily, Kate, Aidy, Beck, Alex and the black girl--I forget her name--the one who does Dionne Warwick.

^^Oh, Melissa needs to stay too. She's funny. But use her more.

Her name is Zasheer Zamato. Say her name.

Aidy and Cecily are two of my all time favs. But it's probably time for them to move on. Kate's first five years? She was maybe the best ever. But man has she dipped. She can go for sure.

Sasheer was terrible. Ego is 1000% better.

Chloe, Melissa and Heidi need to become the utility players that Kate and Cecily are (were?)

Kenan has said earlier in the year that he wants to hit the 20 year mark at SNL. He's already at 18 years making him the cast member with the longest tenure.

[quote]^you know Kenyan has a network sitcom that was just renewed?

Oh. Thank you for mentioning that. I had no clue it survived. I see it's #14 for NBC's scripted shows. I should have said, I hope he does movies. I'm happy to hear it's coming back. He's lucky Lorne has his back.

[quote]That guy who was married to Maria from How I Met Your Mother had to leave SNL when he got a shitcom

Isn't that what happened to Taran? He wanted a break to work on something else and then Lorne let him go but he was fine with Pete doing it.

[quote]Who has fallen off the face of the earth? Sasheer works a lot? Why did she leave? And why did Leslie leave? Was she fired?

Heidi Gardner, Luke Null, John Rudnitsky, John Milhiser, Noel Wells, Mike O'Brien & Brooks Wheelan appeared during the time Leslie was hired and started doing appearances on Weekend Update.

Nasim Pedrad left to do Mulaney's show but she still pops up here and there. John Milhiser was the openly gay guy they had for a season. Hopefully he'll keep busy this year. I know 2020 was a lost year for many people.

Sasheer and Leslie auditioned to be the black female cast member. Leslie became a writer. Sasheer got on the show. By the end of her first season, Sasheer was let go and Leslie, who was asked to appear on Weekend Update, moved up to appearing on the show. A few former cast members said the most important thing you should be able to do on the show is write for yourself. Leslie could. She had already been a writer. Sasheer probably couldn't.

Leslie left once she started booking movies. She never even got a goodbye.

Sasheer plays one half of a lesbian couple on ABC's Topher Grace sitcom, "Home Economics" which was renewed for another season. She was doing streaming movies before that.

Sasheer was boring on the show and is boring on Home Economics, which is boring.

Last night, Cecily as Jeanine Pirro has never been funnier. It was priceless to see her throwing around the wine and singing "My Way." The total dunking in the vat of wine was the perfect ending.

Cecily should get an Emmy for that performance alone. And another year on the show. She's hilarious.

I love Alex Moffat as the guy who bought a boat.

Final show of the season was also the best of the season.

[quote] She was doing streaming movies before that.

Like OnlyFans?

I'm clearly in the minority when I say I think Kenyan is funny. It's variations of the same character, but he's not bad and he works well with the cast.

Kenan is a “glue guy”, like Phil Hartman; doesn’t have Hartman’s range or versatility, but it seems like you can drop him into any sketch and he makes it better. He’s been on the show for so long because he meshes with every kind of cast, too.

Kate, Aidy, & Cecily have all been great at times over the years, but they should have bailed years ago. They’ve been played out.

Colin Jost needs to go most of all—he’s not good on Update, and I think his tenure as head writer has been a disaster. The last 8 or 9 seasons have been the most consistently mediocre period in the show’s history. The combination of too many cast members who can’t write for themselves + Jost = 💩

I love Colin Jost.

[quote]I'm clearly in the minority when I say I think Kenyan is funny.

R70 self-canceled themselves forever ... twice in one sentence.

I noticed that they stopped giving Cecily and Aidy very many skits to act in in the past few years, and McKinnon they just stick in political sketches (I’m ready for her to go). They have amazingly talented women but it usually goes to waste because they still write more for their male cast members, as was the case in the early 90s too. Like wtf is Kyle Mooney still doing on SNL? And Pete Davidson still gets a lot of sketches with his complete lack of range. Why?

I am also sick of Jost and Che. Get rid of them and have at least one woman in there to balance the news out.

If they lose Aidy, Cecily, and McKinnon I hope they feature the other women more instead of barely using them.

"How come someone brilliant like Cole Escola can’t get on this show?"

Cole Escola is Executive Producer of HBOMax's OTHER Jean Smart show, "Hacks". He's doing just fine without SNL. Besides, he's only funny playing the cute gay with an obsession, like in his early videos with Jeffrey Self. His other characters are too dark and border on hard to watch. Brilliant but disturbing.

[quote]Pete

NOOOOOOO, NOT CHAD!

The whole show needs to go. It hasn't been funny since the Hartman years.

I thought it was reported not too long ago Kenan would be leaving the show. I agree wholeheartedly that he's always been too one note. SNL has certainly had its issues with diverse casting, but come on now - he plays the same character in every skit he's in. He's the Tyler Perry of SNL cast.

This thread is about speculating who will actually leave, not who you WISH would leave.

Pete and Cecily very clearly said goodbye on Saturday night. That's not even a rumor anymore. They're out.

Rumored to be leaving are also Jost/Che, if you believe the Reddit threads with insiders included. But that's really it.

They could easily get rid of those four and then don't hire any new comics at all. This is the most bloated the cast has been!

R79 is a stupid cunt.

Cecily is the only fun cast member left. Kenan hasn’t been funny once in the last 20 or whatever years he’s been on.

R80, what about my post was stupid?

It's very well known Cecily is leaving. She will be missed for sure.

If four members of the cast leave, they still have too many cast members and really don't need to hire newbies next season. That's stupid to you?

Keenan has been on for 18 seasons, not 20+. As mentioned above, he said he wants to stay for 20 and then leave.

The two black girls are painfully unfunny and not at all believable, the Leslie Jones curse I guess.

R81 “This thread is about speculating who will actually leave, not who you WISH would leave.”

Your hall monitoring

Jost said in his book a while ago, that he'd likely leave the show after the election, so that's now.

[quote]This thread is about speculating who will actually leave, not who you WISH would leave.

You must be new here. If multiple people are sliding into an adjacent topic then that means the original topic is played out or boring. Datalounge threads do that a lot and have for over a decade.

Hall monitoring threads on Datalounge, unless the thread is filled with loons discussing something COMPLETELY off topic, is stupid.

[quote]The two black girls are painfully unfunny and not at all believable, the Leslie Jones curse I guess.

Leslie Jones, when she was leading a sketch, could be funny. If she was just supporting someone else's it she tended to laugh at herself a lot. I like the black girls on the show now but they couldn't pull this off.

(I know Twitter hated this one but I thought it was hilarious.)

R84 Leslie is a passive aggressive cunt and did that as an act of sabotage, made her star skits look great and brought her cast mates leads down a peg. That Bitch is a real piece of work.

R84, I've been here since the beginning. I take umbrage at your hall monitoring of my hall monitoring. Pointless bitchery is indeed the name of the game here, darling. So is staying on the topic of the post.

There, I said it.

I'm telling you now so I don't have to tell you later.

You must be named Cheryl, because your pussy stinks.

[quote]I've NEVER found Kenan Thompson funny. The person that called him "one note" hit the nail on it's head.

[quote]And I'll never understand how he became rich & famous while his much funnier, more talented and handsome former partner Kel Mitchell was left to wallow in obscurity. Showbusiness is strange.

I have wondered if Kenan squandered his money from child star days and that may explain why he's been on SNL for a long time.

Melissa VIllasenor should leave. She does ok with celeb impersonatons. But, she sucks in sketches where's she not impersonating anyone.

Please let it be Kate. She won her two emmys because she was playing Hillary Clinton. The reality is her impressions suck and she’s not funny. Having said that, I kinda of understand why she wants to stay. She tried a film career and all her movies flopped.

R89 America already tried the squirming, awkward lesbian leading lady. It didn’t work.

Kate McKinnon will probably end up being a voice actor on a bunch of kids movies.

I really like Sasheer Zamata and am glad she's getting work. I thought she was a great straight women on SNL but it's harder to keep a job without any memorable characters or being laugh out loud funny. She's got a terrific presence though and will probably work steadily, just like the first SNL straight woman, Jane Curtin.

I would love a Cheri O’Teri or Molly Shannon-esque type who is wild and over the top at times. Cheri O’Teri was AMAZING in her Morning Latte sketches and as Barbara Walters, and Molly Shannon had several memorable characters.