Some beloved longtime “Saturday Night Live” cast members won’t be returning for Season 51, including eight-season veteran Heidi Gardner.
“SNL” creator Lorne Michaels told Puck he’d shake things up ahead of the next season of the iconic comedy sketch series.
Cast members Devon Walker, Michael Longfellow and Emil Wakim, as well as writer Celeste Yim, have also announced they’re leaving the coveted comedy stage.
Here’s who’s leaving:
Heidi Gardner
Gardner won’t be returning after an epic eight-year run on the “Saturday Night Live” stage, NBC News has learned. Variety first reported her departure.
NBC didn’t comment publicly on Gardner’s departure. Gardner hasn’t spoken about her exit. She made her “SNL” debut in 2017 in Season 43.
She was the longest-tenured female cast member during Season 50, according to Rolling Stone.
Gardner appeared in a variety of sketches and was known for her “Weekend Update” characters “Bailey Gismert,” a cringey teenage film critic, and “Angel, Every Boxer’s Girlfriend from Every Movie About Boxing Ever.”
Gardner also has a flourishing career outside of 30 Rock, appearing in the Apple TV+ series “Shrinking” and the films “Hustle,” “Life of the Party” and “Trust Fall.”
Devon Walker
Walker announced his departure Monday on Instagram, with the caption: “me and baby broke up.”
“To me, jobs in this industry feel like a bunch of little marriages. Some of em last for a long time if we’re lucky, but most of them are fleeting,” he wrote. “Me and the show did three years together, and sometimes it was really cool. Sometimes it was toxic as hell. But we did what we made the most of what it was, even amidst all of the dysfunction.”
Michael Longfellow
Longfellow called his tenure “the best three years of my life so far.”
“Will not be returning for a 4th season at SNL. Wish I was but, so it goes,” he wrote Thursday on Instagram. “I feel nothing but gratitude for the experience and everyone there. Lorne, you gave me the greatest job in the world and changed my life. You even put my mom on TV. Thank you doesnt begin to cover it, but thank you.”
Emil Wakim
Wakim, a featured player on the show, said Wednesday “it was a gut punch of a call” to learn he won’t return for “SNL’s” next season.
“Every time i scanned into the building i would think how insane it is to get to work there. it was the most terrifying, thrilling, and rewarding experience of my life and i will miss it dearly and all the brilliant people that work there that made it feel like a home,” Wakim wrote on Instagram.
“i was so lucky to bring some of myself in there and say things i believed in and i’m excited for whatever chapter comes next. here’s to making more art without compromise,” he added.
Celeste Yim
Yim bade farewell to the show after five seasons as a writer, saying the job “literally made all of my dreams come true BUT it was also grueling.”
“I loved it and I laughed every day and it’s where I grew up,” Yim wrote Sunday on Instagram.
Yim also noted that they are the “first ever out trans person to be a writer for SNL.”
”I always felt honored to be working within the long tradition of queer writing at the show,” Yim wrote. “I feel so powerless to protect trans people in the world but writing connects us and makes us permanent, so it’s what I will continue to do.”
Season 51 premieres Oct. 4 on NBC.
