Saturday Night Live’s Lorne Michaels Addresses Recent Cast Exits

Lorne Michaels has addressed Saturday Night Live’s recent cast exits.

Saturday Night Live Season 51 will premiere on NBC next month. Over the past couple of weeks, a number of former cast members have announced that they won’t be returning for this new season. This includes Ego Nwodim, Devon Walker, Emil Wakim, Heidi Gardner, and Michael Longfellow, as well as writers Celeste Yim and Rosebud Baker.

What did Lorne Michaels say about the Saturday Night Live cast exits?

Speaking with Entertainment Tonight at the Emmy Awards, Michael addressed the recent casting changes.

“The show has always brought people in from different ages and different generations, and it’s how it revives itself,” he said. “It’s always hard when people leave, but there’s a time for that, and our audience has always stayed relatively young, and more so now with TikTok…Change is good. The people we’re bringing in, I’m really excited about.”

The cast of Saturday Night Live Season 51 does include Chloe Fineman, Bowen Yang, Kenan Thompson, Marcello Hernández, Colin Jost, Michael Che, Mikey Day, James Austin Johnson, Andrew Dismukes, Sarah Sherman, Ashley Padilla, Jane Wickline, Tommy Brennan, Jeremy Culhane, Kam Patterson, Veronika Slowikowska, and Ben Marshall.

The SNL50: The Anniversary Special took home the Best Variety Special (Live) at the Emmys, which were held on Sunday, September 14, 2025.

Michaels said in his speech, per Entertainment Weekly, “I won this award for the first time 50 years ago in 1975. I was younger and had a lot of dreams about what would happen in my life, and not one of those dreams was that I’d still be doing the same show for the next 50 years. However, here we are.”

Saturday Night Live is currently set to premiere its 51st season on NBC on October 4, 2025. No host or musical guest has been announced for the episode as of yet.

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