‘Saturday Night Live’ Adds Three New Cast Members
With less than three weeks before the October 1st kickoff of Saturday Night Live‘s 42nd season, the long-running sketch comedy series has announced that they added three new featured players, including their first ever Latina cast member.
On Monday, SNL welcomed Mikey Day, Alex Moffat and Melissa Villaseñor to the cast. Day, an SNL writer since 2013 and a veteran of the Groundlings, will move from the writer’s room to on-screen talent for Season 42. Moffat, a cast member and writer on the Lorne Michaels-produced variety show Maya & Marty, will also take his talents to Studio 8H for the show’s upcoming season.
Villaseñor is also no stranger to NBC as the Los Angeles-based comedian was a Top 16 finalist on the sixth season of America’s Got Talent, where her impeccable celebrity impressions resonated with viewers. Villaseñor would be only the third – following Horatio Sanz and Fred Armisen – SNL cast member with Latin roots, and the series’ first ever Latina player, the Daily Beast reports.
The new hires comes following a summer of transition for SNL as two of the show’s more tenured cast members, Taran Killam and Jay Pharoah, both announced they would be leaving the series. Killam’s departure came after producers decided not to pick up the final year on his seven-year contract. However, Killam left the series on good terms.
“My feeling about it is I got my dream job,” Killam said. “I set out to be on SNL and I got to do that and I did very well. And I love and adore and will forever have close ties and tight bonds with the brilliant, smartest, funniest people I’ve ever met in my life. So, I have no gripes at all.”