‘Saturday Night Live’ Producer Lorne Michaels on the Upcoming ‘Transition’ Year and Plan to Add Four New Castmembers
variety.comMichael Schneider Variety Editor at Large “Saturday Night Live” is about to enter another “transition year,” Lorne Michaels told reporters in the Emmys media center on Monday, moments after picking up another win for variety sketch series.
Michaels said the show, which enters its 48th season in October, will announce four new cast members next week. Longtime cast members Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, Pete Davidson and Kyle Mooney announced their exits last spring, shortly before the season’s final show.
Earlier this month, three more cast members — Alex Moffat, Melissa Villaseñor and Aristotle Athari — departed the show. Michaels said the transition actually would have happened a few years ago, but the COVID-19 pandemic kept the existing cast longer than expected. “ [COVID[ interfered with the natural order of things I think people might have left earlier, but there was no place to go… And there’s nothing after the show except to go home!” Michaels credited the close camaraderie among cast members that transpired during the past few years, including the at-home shows that were produced in the early days of the pandemic. “I think that there was just a bonding,” he said . “And we did those at home shows, So there was an intimacy and a bond, a connection between the audience and this group.
And I think we just I couldn’t imagine the world without that whole team. So we just kept going. “And this will be a transition year,” he added. “The change yours are always difficult.
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