“Saturday Night Live” is entering its 51st season with some pre-season cast exits.
Emil Wakim has confirmed this week that he won’t be returning to the NBC sketch comedy institution, after fellow comedian Devon Walker made an announcement earlier this week.
Walker, who came on board in 2021, posted a real Instagram note on Monday looking back at his three years on the series. “Me and the show did three years together, and sometimes it was really cool. Sometimes it was toxic as hell,” he posted. The caption read: “wait… did he quit or did he get fired?
On Wednesday, Wakim announced his own departure. Unlike Walker, who had become a repertory player, Wakim had only just finished his first season as a featured player. In his goodbye post, Wakim called the news “a gut punch of a call to get,” but also thanked his time at “SNL.”
“Each time I zapped into the building I would think how crazy it is to commute to work there,” Wakim wrote in lowercase. “It was the most frightening, exhilarating, and fulfilling experience of my life and I will miss it so much… I felt so fortunate to bring some of myself in there and say things that I believed in and I’m looking forward to whatever the next chapter is.”
These departures follow the longtime “SNL” creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels’ suggestion that more substantial changes were in the works. Michaels told Puck in a recent interview that he anticipated “shaking things up” after the show’s historic 50th season. “It’ll be announced in a week or so,” he teased.
Included in the turnover was writer Celeste Yim, who also confirmed leaving after five seasons. Yim, the first openly nonbinary writer on the show, characterized the experience on Instagram as “a dream come true” and “grueling,” remembering nights of sleeping in the office but also the friendships and laughter that made their time on the show.
Although next season will introduce some new holes in the roster, Michaels assured fans James Austin Johnson, whose dead-on impression of Donald Trump has been a fan favorite, will return.
Since its premiere in 1975, “SNL” has seen numerous reinventions, introducing the careers of icons like John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, Kate McKinnon, and Kenan Thompson. When the 51st season debuts on October 4, fans can anticipate another era of change for the late-night comedy institution.
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