Why Don’t Cast Members Want to Leave ‘SNL’ Anymore?
The list of Saturday Night Live’s all-time greatest cast members doesn’t exactly match up with the roster of comedians who’ve appeared in the most episodes. More than half of the 10 longest-tenured SNL comics — Kenan Thompson, Colin Jost, Michael Che, Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong and Aidy Bryant all lasted double-digit seasons — appeared in the 2020s.
This is new. This is weird. Why don’t cast members want to leave the show anymore?
Chevy Chase couldn’t wait to go. After one year of SNL success, he was hungry to try his hand at the movies. Bill Murray, John Belushi and Eddie Murphy jumped ship after four seasons. No one wanted Tina Fey to leave, say James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales in their book Live From New York, “but as the saying goes, It Was Time.”
Don't Miss
Will it ever be time for Thompson, now hanging out for 22 seasons and counting? “I don’t know if and when I’ll ever leave SNL,” he told Stephen Colbert in 2023.
He’s not alone. Esquire quotes a number of cast members, including Jost, Che and Bowen Yang, extolling the virtues of SNL as a great place to work. “When I look out at the media landscape, what am I going to be doing in two years? Where am I going to go next?” James Austin Johnson told Marc Maron on his WTF podcast in 2022. “I want to do SNL forever.”
The media landscape is the problem. Chase, Belushi and Murphy, along with later stars like Adam Sandler, Chris Farley and Will Ferrell, had big-screen comedy offers waiting for them when they left the show. Maybe comedies will come back to movie theaters in a big way like they did in the 2000s — can we get just one blockbuster? — but studios aren’t making them now.
Fey, Amy Poehler and Andy Samberg had sweet TV deals ready to sign as soon as they were done at SNL. But shows like Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine are nearly as extinct as the major movie comedy. Sitcom stardom isn’t an option — or at least, not a promising one.
Current cast members only have to look at the fates of the most recently departed stars. Aidy Bryant’s Shrill, Cecily Strong’s Schmigadoon and Pete Davidson’s Bupkis came and went quietly. Quick, which streamers aired those shows if you actually wanted to watch them?
I’ll wait.
Ironically, the one place where comedy is currently thriving is stand-up specials on outlets like Netflix and HBO. Twenty years ago, a spot on an HBO Young Comedians special was just the break David Spade needed to catch Lorne Michaels’ eye. These days, a young version of Spade might hope to parlay his SNL fame into a series of Netflix stand-up gigs.
You can’t blame a young comic like Sarah Sherman or Marcello Hernandez for sitting back and wondering: Just exactly who was the last SNL cast member to find success after leaving the show? Kristen Wiig with Bridesmaids? Bill Hader with Barry? Both left in the early 2010s. That’s a long dry spell for a show that purports to be a comedy kingmaker.
You’re talking sense, James Austin Johnson. If it’s a choice between SNL or hosting Is It Cake?, staying put is the most desirable option.
