The Season 50 cast of the NBC sketch comedy series “Saturday Night Live” has been announced, with rising comedians Ashley Padilla, Emil Wakim and Jane Wickline joining as leads, the network announced Tuesday. The new season is scheduled to premiere on Sept. 28.
Chloe Troast, who joined “SNL” as a lead cast member last season, was not asked to return, she said in an Instagram post Monday.
“Unfortunately, I was not asked back to 'SNL' this season,” Troast wrote. “I wish I could go back and be with all the wonderful friends I made there, it truly felt like home. But that was not to be.”
Padilla, like many “SNL” alumni before her — including Will Ferrell, Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig and Phil Hartman — comes from the Los Angeles improv and sketch comedy troupe Groundlings. She also appeared in a final-season episode of HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” this year and in an episode of the NBC revival of “Night Court.”
Wakim, a Lebanese-American comedian who grew up largely in Indiana, made his late-night stand-up comedy debut in 2022 on NBC's “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” That year, he was named the New Face of Comedy at Montreal's Just for Laughs comedy festival and opened for comedians Roy Wood Jr., Nikki Glaser, Hasan Minhaj and Neal Brennan.
Wickline is probably most recognizable from TikTok, where she has nearly a million followers and is a regular contributor to “Stapleview,” a live TikTok comedy show.
Also returning are principal cast members Michael Che, Mikey Day, Andrew Dismukes, Chloe Fineman, Heidi Gardner, James Austin Johnson, Colin Jost, Ego Nwodim, Sarah Sherman, Kenan Thompson and Bowen Yang. The former players Marcello Hernández, Michael Longfellow and Devon Walker — all of whom joined “SNL” in its 48th season — will be moving up to the principal cast.
In August, Punkie Johnson, who has been a part of “SNL” since 2020, confirmed that she would not be returning for the upcoming season. One of the characters Johnson played was Vice President Kamala Harris. Maya Rudolph, an “SNL” cast member from 2000 to 2007 who has returned to play Harris 10 times through 2021, appears set to reprise the role as Harris vie for the White House as the Democratic candidate.
Molly Kearney, the show's first non-binary cast member, announced in August that she would not be returning after two seasons on the show. “This was such a dream come true,” Kearney wrote in an Instagram post. “So incredibly grateful for this time in my life.”
