‘Saturday Night Live’: Entire Cast To Return For Season 46, No Departures After Pandemic-Interrupted Season

Peter White
·2 min read

The whole gang is getting back together for season 46 of Saturday Night Live.

NBC confirmed that all of the cast of season 45 including Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, Cecily Strong and Kenan Thompson will be returning as the sketch comedy series returns to Studio 8H on October 3.

There had previously been some talk that some of its bigger names were considering leaving at the end of their contracts.

McKinnon was thought to have been previously been mulling her future on the show, having become one of the breakout stars of the last few years and ahead of her role in Hulu limited series The Dropout. Bryant and Strong were thought to be coming to the end of their contracts but will also remain with the show.

The fact that season 45 was interrupted by COVID-19 may have played a part in some cast members’ decisions, with the lure of getting back to some normalcy with familiar faces not an unattractive option right now ahead of one of the most important, and unusual, Presidential elections.

This comes as featured player Ego Nwodim was upped to a repertory player for this upcoming season.

That group consists of Beck Bennett, Aidy Bryant, Michael Che, Pete Davidson, Mikey Day, Chloe Fineman, Heidi Gardner, Colin Jost, Kate McKinnon, Alex Moffat, Kyle Mooney, Chris Redd, Cecily Strong, Kenan Thompson, Melissa Villaseñor and Bowen Yang.

They will likely be joined by the likes of Maya Rudolph, in some form, playing Kamala Harris, while Jason Sudeikis recently teased that he’d be up for playing Joe Biden again.

SNL joins The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Late Night with Seth Meyers in returning to 30 Rock at Rockefeller Center. Fallon has been back in the building for a number of weeks, while Meyers returned earlier this week.

However, unlike those shows, which are based around one host, SNL has a large cast.

Many of the cast members have spent the last few months saying how they miss the studio. Kenan Thompson, the show’s longest-running cast member with 17 seasons under his belt, recently talked up missing the studio, while Colin Jost said that the pandemic made him appreciate more than ever the routine of working at the studio.

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