Big changes are afoot at the NBC late night sketch comedy show, Saturday Night Live.
TV Line was the first to report that veteran cast members Taran Killam and Jay Pharoah are leaving the iconic NBC show and will pursue other opportunities. Both had been with SNL for six seasons. Featured player Jon Rudnitsky is also leaving the cast.
One might assume the popular cast members were leaving on their own steam. However, Killam told Uproxx that the series decided not to pick up the final year of his seven-season contract. “I had sort of had it in my head I would make this upcoming year my last year, but then heard they weren’t going to pick up my contract,” he said. “I was never given a reason why, really.”
The post-production process on Why We’re Killing Gunther, a film Killam is directing would have overlapped with SNL‘s production schedule.
“I honestly don’t know what happened on the other side, but I do know we had expressed I have work on this film and in bonding this picture, that has to get cleared with SNL,” he said.
Killam is philosophical: “My feeling about it is I got my dream job. 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.”
He was one of my favorite cast members. It’s nonsensical to cut a popular cast member who only has a year left on his contract. But, who knows why the famously mercurial creator/producer Lorne Michaels is thinking. Maybe Killam looked at him the wrong way one day. It’s probably safe to assume the talented Jay Pharoah was also let go. Crazy.
Also leaving the show is featured player Jon Rudnitsky who joined the cast last season. The cast member didn’t leave much of an impression outside of a buzzy parody of the film Dirty Dancing during Weekend Update. Some featured players make the grade, and others don’t.
