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With Will Forte’s recent announcement that he will be leaving Saturday Night Live after 8 seasons and reports that NBC’s late-night sketch show may be adding as many as 4 new cast members, the question is who else might be exiting when SNL returns for a 36th season later this month.
I hear Abby Elliott, daughter of Chris Elliott and the first second-generation SNL cast member, was in serious jeopardy but now appears safe to come back, while rumor is that Jenny Slate might not be returning. Slate, who joined as a featured player along with Nasim Pedrad last fall made headlines with her SNL debut. On the show’s season premiere last September, in her first appearance during a sketch titled Biker Chick Chat Slate uttered the word “fuckin’” on live television.
As for the new players joining SNL, rumored new additions include MadTV alum Taran Killam, Chicago-based Paul Brittain and Venessa Bayer as well as impressionist Jay Pharoah. The last time a quartet of new featured players joined the show, that group gave us Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers.
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Paul and Vanessa are in as featured performers. SNL also hired Shelley Gossman and Tom Flanigan from the Second City stages and Heather Campbell from UCB LA as writers. And the show has a history of promoting writers to cast members.
Guess Will Forte’s movie career is taking off since MacGruber was such a hit…
Does it really matter who poorly reads off teleprompters?
Do I need to say that having REGULAR black characters, male and female is sorely needed? Do I really need to state that? I mean, people who will be in at least 1 sketch EVERY show??? I won’t even say that we need black writers. That would be asking for the moon. We can’t even get women writers on the Daily Show, let alone black writers on SNL.
How Abby Elliot has managed to stay on is beyond me. She’s just not funny. Apparently being a former SNL alum’s daughter helps. I had heard she was on the chopping block because Lorne blames her for wrecking Fred Armison and Elizabeth Moss’s marriage.
Jenny Slate is funnier than Abby Elliot, and should be the one staying.
It is no harm in my opinion for new presenters to be added to the show as its needs freshening up as it was going a tad stale for a while.
Abbey is the only cute one and she’s never in a skit. The skits are boring. They need all new idea people.
Jenny Slate is deadweight. They should have fired her during last season. Abby gets a pass for her impressions of Anna Faris and Brittany Murphy (although they obviously won’t be doing the latter again).
the only reason to watch SNL anymore is Kristin Wiig. The show is god awful.
Very excited about this Pharoah dude. This motherfucka is funny as all hell. He’ll probably end up being the show’s mvp. His impersonation of Obama, Denzel Washington and Will Smith is so accurate that its downright eerie. Vanessa Bayer could be a major player, she’s good. I think I’ll actually watch SNL this year, at least the premiere. Last year I couldn’t deal with it. It just epitomized lameness for me. I’m sure there were a couple of bright spots, but for the most part to me it just sucked. Instead of hiring actors plugging their upcoming releases, they should hire more comedians that can bounce off more fluidly with the featured players. Say what you want about Dane Cook and I’m not a fan of his stand up, but his appearances on SNL were hilarious.
Pharoah seems to be funny, but you know being an impressionist eventually gets very old and typically leads a person to a career in voice-overs. Hopefully, he uses the impressions to get him to the dance, but finds characters to bring it on home.
I mean, I can’t stand Frank Caliendo because outside of his impressions, he’s just not funny.
Bring back Maya Rudolph, kids and all.
Let her husband direct her episode.
My three kids ( sons)
Hey Lorne—just bring back the cartoons…
Jenny Slate wasn’t that funny. She replaced a female that was. So I am not sorry to see her go. They should rehire Casey Watkins and Michaela Watkins
Crap. Jenny Slate is not only funny, but she’s my imaginary girlfriend too. I hope they
hang onto her for another season.
Losing Slate would be a shame. She had the best (& most intriguing) screen presence of all of the new kids.
(yawn)
…wake me when SNL is relevant again…
Taran Killam is amazing. I will miss seeing him at the Groundlings.
What about Bobby Moynihan, anyone seen any mention online from a credible source?
That’s too bad for Jenny, wasn’t even given a chance. I think the car horn salesgirl is one of the funnier sketches in recent memory.
SNL has been terrible for years now…it’s unwatchable.
Slate was useless this season and so was Elliot. It will be great to see what these new four can add to this dreadful show.
In related news, I watched a bootleg from an old 94 episode. It was better than anything in the past 10 years or so.
That’s sad.
I wonder how relevant SNL can continue to be in the face of other “new media” outlets for comedy? “Funny or Die”, etc. The brand is still strong, but can this network produced show bring in the revenue needed to sustain it? And with high visability names no longer part of the core cast, will enough folks tune in and stay with the show long enough to see these new plays emerge? It’ll be an interesting experiment, I lool forward to seeing what happens.
Lorne should go.
While he no doubt was a huge talent, there’s a reason you don’t have the same comics being big anymore after 36 years. Comedy changes, but Lorne doesn’t change with it. Only the safest skits get on the air, which makes for a boring show. Even the most talented cast and writers can’t compete with a producer who won’t let them get anything really interesting and different on air.
With all the hype and hooey generated from a recent SNL episode where the host was selected as a result of public support, regardless of the personality involved, wouldn’t the buzz have been built more based on a feeling that viewers had made their voices heard?
Even if the writers had tried to screw it up, which at times can be hard to tell the difference, wasn’t this pretty much a can’t miss scenario? While factors in the host selection process can lead to endless speculation, wouldn’t the more divergent path taken to get there tend to thicken the intrigue? Could this be the start of a trend, expanding the interactive so that people could have more of a say, or will it be back to business as usual?
Years ago I was part of something along the same lines, runner-up in the Anyone Can Host contest. Following up on this more recently, I got back in touch with Lorne Michaels through a series of letters. As the process evolved, a few were addressed to certain individuals inquiring as to whether they would consider being host.
Here are links, in reverse chronological order, to those letters:
Andy Rooney Tiger Woods Susan Boyle Woody Allen Howard Stern
Clint Eastwood Mel Brooks Buck Henry David Bowie Nicholas Sarkozy
(Since the links won’t transfer, please go to: http://dwdiamond.com/L2L.html )
With possibly little to gain by following up on this, it may be awhile before any of them ever do, yet isn’t that just the point? How much would it raise the bar if they did? Is SNL more about taking chances or playing it safe? Easy enough to ask such a question from the outside, perhaps the only ones who could find a credible response are too busy to ponder such things.
Whoever the host might be, it’s just one show, one week, temporary impact. But what if a similar campaign were to add someone new to the writing staff? How much fun could that be? Not just anyone, a raving lunatic. Maybe not fresh out of the nut house, but somebody crazy enough to imagine there could be a chance in hell it would ever happen. Has the world gone crazy? Is there enough craziness out there to make a difference? Am I the only crazy one?
So if you ever thought SNL was becoming more of a lullaby than wake up call, all it would take is a little follow up to start tipping the scales away from complacency, towards chaos…
Better crazy than lazy,
DWLewis
http:www.dwdiamond.com/
Lauren Michaels is a control freak. The show needs an enema and so does Mr. Michaels tight ass. Maybe they should just say “Dead From New York, It’s Saturday Night Dead,” and get it over with. Let it go Lauren, Let it go. Don’t embarrass yourself further.