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Every 'Saturday Night Live' Cast Member Leaving the Show Ahead of Season
51 (Updating)
Lorne Michaels says he's feeling "pressure to reinvent this season"
after the show's landmark 50th year.
Katie Atkinson
Billboard.com
8/28/2025

Ahead of the season 51 premiere of Saturday Night Live on Oct. 4, Lorne Michaels confirmed in an interview that a few familiar faces will not
return to the cast this fall -- and those exits are starting to be
announced one by one.

When asked by Puck in an interview published Aug. 22 if he planned to
"shake things up" for the 2025-26 season, the SNL creator and producer
replied, "Yes," adding that he was feeling the "pressure to reinvent
this season" after mostly keeping the cast intact from season 49 into
the show's landmark 50th year.

"I wanted people coming back and being part of [the 50th season],"
Michaels told Puck. "So when Kate [McKinnon] hosted, Kristen [Wiig] and
Maya [Rudolph] came back for it. And that meant there couldn't be those
kind of disruptions or anything that was going to take the focus off
[the 50th season]."

The 2024-25 season 50 cast included 17 people in total: 14 full-time
cast members and three featured players. The longest-running cast
members currently on Saturday Night Live are led by Kenan Thompson, who
started on the show in 2003 and holds the record for the longest-tenured
SNL castmate of all time. Other vets in the mix: Weekend Update
co-anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che, who both joined the cast in 2014;
Mikey Day (2016); Heidi Gardner (2017); Ego Nwodim (2018); and Chloe
Fineman and Bowen Yang (both 2019).

But who won't be back when the sketch comedy show returns to Studio 8H
in October? Below, find the full list of cast members exiting Saturday
Night Live ahead of season 51.

Devon Walker

On Aug. 26, Walker confirmed his exit from the show with an Instagram
post captioned "me and baby broke up."

He expounded on his exit in a note posted to Instagram with the cheeky
title "wait..did he quit or did he get fired?," writing in part: "To me,
jobs in this industry feel like a bunch of little marriages. Some of em
last for a long time if we're lucky, but most of them are fleeting.
Permanent until they're not. That's the deal. You know what it is it
when you sign up. Me and the show did three years together, and
sometimes it was really cool. Sometimes it was toxic as hell. But we did
what we made the most of what it was, even amidst all of the
dysfunction. We made a f---ed up lil family."

Emil Wakim

Emil Wakim was one of three featured players added for season 50
(alongside Ashley Padilla and Jane Wickline), so he only spent one
season as part of the SNL cast.

Wakim announced the news Aug. 27 on Instagram, writing in part: "i won't
be returning to snl next year. it was a gut punch of a call to get but
i'm so grateful for my time there. i was at six flags celebrating my
friends 36th birthday and went on a really emotional walk through bugs
bunny park and stared out across daffy duck lake thinking about life.
every time i scanned into the building i would think how insane it is to
get to work there. it was the most terrifying, thrilling, and rewarding experience of my life and i will miss it dearly and all the brilliant
people that work there that made it feel like a home. thank u to lorne
for taking a chance on me and changing my life."

Michael Longfellow

Michael Longfellow joined the cast in 2022 for season 48 as a featured
player and was promoted to the cast for season 50 -- his final year on
the show.

Deadline broke the news on Aug. 28, and Longfellow followed with an
Instagram post, writing in part: "Will not be returning for a 4th season
at SNL. Wish I was but, so it goes. It was the best three years of my
life so far. I feel nothing but gratitude for the experience and
everyone there. Lorne, you gave me the greatest job in the world and
changed my life. You even put my mom on TV. Thank you doesn't begin to
cover it, but thank you."

Heidi Gardner

Heidi Gardner is the longest-running cast member to exit so far, joining
the show in 2017 as a featured player on season 43. She was promoted to full-time cast two years later, in 2019, spending eight seasons on the
show.

Like Longfellow, the news of Gardner's exit did not come from the comic herself: Vulture
(www.vulture.com/article/heidi-gardner-leaving-snl.html) was the first
to report the news on Aug. 28.

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The 'Saturday Night Live' cast is being shaken up. Who is leaving, and
why?
Vivian Ho
The Washington Post
Published Aug 29, 2025

Several "Saturday Night Live" cast members and at least one writer are
leaving the show - in what entertainment outlets are describing as an "earthquake" or "bloodbath."

Four of the 17 cast members from Season 50 are leaving, in the largest
exodus of cast members since 2022, when eight people left ahead of
Season 48. While the exact reasons for the departures are not clear,
several of the exiting cast members have suggested it was not their
choice to go.

Creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels told Puck News last week
that he would be making changes before the start of the 51st season on
Oct. 4. Asked whether he was going to "shake things up" and whether he
felt "pressure to reinvent" the coming season, he said yes, adding that
he had wanted to avoid any "disruptions" during the 50th season, which
involved a half-century anniversary special and a