SNL cast members

Since its debut in 1975, the beloved sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL) has managed to weather its many ups and downs by constantly evolving. One of the sources of this renewal is the steady churn of the show’s cast. After nearly every season, familiar faces are let go and new comedians are brought in. Some cast members stay for many years—the record holder is Kenan Thompson with 22 seasons and counting—while others flame out and are dismissed after one season. A major source of continuity through all this change is Lorne Michaels, the show’s cocreator and, excepting a hiatus in the early 1980s, its longtime producer.

More than 170 people have walked the stage of the famous Studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York City, as cast members on SNL. Read on to learn about these comedians and the different eras of the show.

1975–79: Not Ready for Primetime Players and other early cast members

The rookie class of SNL earned the nickname the Not Ready for Primetime Players. Chevy Chase was the breakout star of the opening seasons but became the first cast member to leave the show, in 1976. Cast members such as Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and John Belushi went on to have successful movie careers, and another, Al Franken, eventually made it to the halls of the U.S. Congress as a senator from Minnesota.

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1980–84: Lorne Michaels leaves and Eddie Murphy becomes a star

SNL experienced its first major upheaval in 1980, when Lorne Michaels left the show and the entire cast turned over. Some expected SNL to be canceled, but relief came in the person of Eddie Murphy, just 19 years old when he was hired in 1980. Murphy became a star with such memorable characters as Mister Robinson (a spoof on the children’s show host Mister Rogers) and a very grumpy take on the animated clay character Gumby. Other now famous names passed through SNL during this era without making much of a splash, including future Seinfeld star Julia Louis-Dreyfus and multiple Tony Award-winning actress Laurie Metcalf.

1985–89: Lorne Michaels returns

In 1985 Michaels returned as the show’s producer. Standout performers over the next few years included Dana Carvey, known for playing The Church Lady, Garth Algar of “Wayne’s World” (alongside Mike Myers as Wayne Campbell), and U.S. Pres. George H.W. Bush. Also prominent was comic Dennis Miller, who manned the desk of “Weekend Update,” a segment that spoofs the news of the day, from 1985 to 1991.

1990–94: Bad Boys and a mass firing

Notable among SNL’s cast in the first half of the 1990s were performers trained primarily as stand-up comedians, including Chris Rock, David Spade, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, and Norm Macdonald. They influenced the show through their wry, never-taking-anything-too-seriously sensibility. That bunch, alongside the lovable, over-the-top physical comedian Chris Farley, became known as the Bad Boys of SNL. This chaotic period proved short-lived, however, as much of the cast was let go in 1995 amid low ratings and loud criticisms of the show’s direction.

1995–99: Will Ferrell, Tracy Morgan, and Molly Shannon

In the late 1990s SNL shifted to a more earnest, less cynical tone. Many among its new crop of cast members had been recruited from improv comedy programs, especially the Los Angeles–based troupe the Groundlings, which produced Will Ferrell, Cheri Oteri, Chris Kattan, and Chris Parnell. Also noteworthy from this era was gifted mimic Darrell Hammond, who did impressions of Pres. Bill Clinton and political commentator Chris Matthews, among others.

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2000–04: Tina Fey, Jimmy Fallon, and Amy Poehler

In the early 2000s SNL was overseen by the show’s first female head writer, Tina Fey, who also cohosted “Weekend Update” with Jimmy Fallon. This period also marked the emergence of several performers who became show business mainstays after graduating from SNL, including Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers, Fred Armisen, and Maya Rudolph.

2005–11: Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, and Digital Shorts

In 2005 Michaels hired Andy Samberg and writers Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer. The trio, called the Lonely Island, created a series of recorded video skits, called Digital Shorts, that often featured comedy raps on various silly topics, like buying cupcakes. An early entry, “Lazy Sunday,” became what some consider to be the first viral video on the then-new platform YouTube. This and other shorts, including “Dick in a Box” (costarring pop star Justin Timberlake) helped attract younger audiences to SNL and ensure that the decades-old show had a place in the Internet-centric media landscape of the 21st century. This period also featured all-time favorites Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader and the hugely popular impression of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin by Tina Fey, who had left the show in 2006 but returned in 2008 as a guest star to play the bespectacled Alaskan politician.

2012–16: Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, and Trump sketches

The mid-2010s saw SNL addressing the increasingly fraught U.S. political landscape, most notably with Kate McKinnon’s impression of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign opposite guest star Alec Baldwin’s evocation of Donald Trump. In 2014 Michael Che and Colin Jost assumed anchor duties at “Weekend Update.” Also that year Pete Davidson, arguably the breakout star of this period, made his SNL debut at age 20. Comedians such as Leslie Jones, Aidy Bryant, and Cecily Strong also played a big role in the era’s more viral moments.

2017–24: Strength in numbers and diversity

Over the years SNL has received persistent criticism that its cast is not sufficiently diverse, especially in terms of race. The show seemingly took steps to rectify this deficit in the late 2010s and early 2020s, as it welcomed more nonwhite cast members into one of its largest casts ever. In addition, it featured such players as Bowen Yang and Punkie Johnson, who incorporated their LGBTQ identities into their comedy. Molly Kearney was the first nonbinary cast member to join the show. The show’s responsiveness to public criticism was also demonstrated in 2019, when newly hired comedian Shane Gillis was dropped from the show before ever appearing onscreen after instances of him using racial slurs on his podcast came to light. Michaels later said that it had been NBC’s decision to fire Gillis and that he argued against doing it, and Gillis later hosted the show, in 2024.

2025– : After the 50th anniversary

In 2025 SNL celebrated its 50th anniversary on the air with a three-and-a-half-hour special, broadcast in February, that featured many cast members from the show’s history. A large turnover followed that landmark occasion, as five regular cast members were replaced. The new group reflected the changing media and political tides of the mid-2020s, as two comedians, Jeremy Culhane and Veronika Slowikowska, were best known as content creators on TikTok and another, Kam Patterson, was a stand-up comic and self-professed Trump supporter associated with the right-leaning comedy scene headed by Tony Hinchcliffe and Joe Rogan.