Meet the Five Newest Cast Members of Saturday Night Live | Vanity Fair

Live from Studio 8H…it’s five new Saturday Night Live cast members. On Tuesday, NBC announced that it’s adding Tommy Brennan, Jeremy Culhane, Ben Marshall, Kam Patterson, and Veronika Slowikowska to the cast of the long-running sketch series.

After SNL’s 50th season—which included two major televised specials in the SNL50: The Homecoming Concert and SNL50: The Anniversary Special—rumors swirled that Lorne Michaels was looking to reshape the cast in a major way. Last week, a raft of departures were announced: Emil Wakim leaves the series after a single season. Devon Walker and Michael Longfellow have both departed after three years with the program. Most surprisingly of all—unless you’ve been paying attention—longtime cast member Heidi Gardner announced she’d be leaving Saturday Night Live after eight seasons as one of the show’s most visible faces.

With room on the roster, Michaels has made good on his promise to shake things up, hiring five rising comedians to join the cast as featured players. But who made the cut, and why does one of them look so familiar? Here’s a breakdown of SNL’s newest cast members.

Marshall may be technically new to the show’s cast, but he isn’t new to Saturday Night Live. In 2021, he boarded the show as part of the comedy troupe Please Don’t Destroy, along with his partners Martin Herlihy and John Higgins. Together, the trio made digital shorts for SNL, à la The Lonely Island from the early aughts; several of those videos, including “Roast” with Dakota Johnson, went viral.

Now Marshall is getting bumped up to featured player, while Herlihy—whose father, Tim Herlihy, wrote for SNL and is a frequent Adam Sandler collaborator—is reportedly sticking around as a writer for season 51. Higgins, whose father Steve Higgins is a longtime writer and producer on SNL as well as the announcer for The Tonight Show, is leaving the show to pursue other acting projects. So Marshall will be on his own on Saturday Night Live for the first time this year—but he’s got four years of SNL experience under his belt. With his height and bright red hair, he’ll certainly stand out.

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Those who love to scroll may be familiar with SNL’s only new female cast hire, Veronika Slowikowska. She already has a healthy online following for her viral, often absurdist sketch comedy content, with over 650K followers on TikTok and 900K followers on Instagram. (Since the SNL announcement, her Instagram following has grown to 1 million). Beyond social media, Slowikowska has starred in What We Do in the Shadows and the second season of Netflix’s Tires as the love interest to SNL reject turned two-time host Shane Gillis.

A sketch comic with a decidedly Gen Z sensibility, Slowikowska’s background makes her similar to TikTok star Jane Wickline, who joined the cast last year. But don’t let her online presence fool you: Slowikowska is a talented comedian who regularly performs live solo shows in New York at venues like the Gramercy Theatre and Joe’s Pub. She’s also got a great singing voice, so don’t be surprised if you see her breaking out the musical comedy chops, à la past cast members like Cecily Strong and Chloe Troast.

A stand-up comedian from St. Paul, Minnesota, Brennan got his start in Chicago and was chosen as a New Face of Comedy for the Just for Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal in 2023. A recent New York transplant, he’s opened for Nikki Glaser, Taylor Tomlinson, and the late Louie Anderson, and he regularly performs at the Comedy Cellar. This past year, he made his late night debut performing stand-up on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon with a set about growing up as one of eight children (with six sisters!). Outside of stand-up, Brennan starred in the viral web series Roommates-in-Law, which he created with Tim Smith. He comes to SNL with over 100K followers on Instagram and a love of statement jackets.

Patterson is also a stand-up who joins Saturday Night Live with a large online following, having amassed 574K followers on Instagram and 418K on TikTok. The 26-year-old Orlando, Florida, native first made waves in... ...the comedy community as a guest on manosphere comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s podcast Kill Tony, where he’s now a regular. Patterson will appear in the upcoming Netflix comedy film 72 Hours starring Kevin Hart, alongside his new SNL castmates Ben Marshall and Marcello Hernández. Patterson is an expert at crowd work and regularly tours the country performing his stand-up, which covers everything from working the cash register to his thoughts about pickleball.

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Culhane hails from Altadena, California, and is making his debut on SNL with a smaller social media following compared to the other new cast members (he had just over 28K followers on Instagram when the announcement was made). He creates sketch videos for the comedy streaming platform DropoutTV, formerly known as CollegeHumor, and is a regular on its series Game Changer. Culhane's viral solo comedy videos often feature a series of selfies in quick, comedic succession. He recently picked up running as a new hobby.

Unless there are any other changes, he and the other four new members will be joining veteran cast members Hernandez, Michael Che, Mikey Day, Andrew Dismukes, Chloe Fineman, James Austin Johnson, Colin Jost, Ego Nwodim, Sarah Sherman, Kenan Thompson, and Emmy nominee Bowen Yang, as well as featured players Wickline and Ashley Padilla. The five newcomers will be seen for the first time on the 51st season premiere of Saturday Night Live on NBC on Saturday, October 4.

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