Some dear members of the “Saturday Night Live” cast will not return for season 51, including the veteran of eight season, Heidi Gardner.
The creator of “SNL” Lorne Michaels told Puck that he would shake things before the next season of the iconic comedy sketches.
The members of the cast Devon Walker, Michael Longfellow and Emil Wakim, as well as the Celeste Yim writer, have also announced that they are leaving the coveted comedy scenario.
Here is who leaves:
Heidi Gardner
Gardner will not return after an epic eight -year race in the “Saturday Night Live” stage, according to NBC News. Variety first reported his departure.
NBC did not comment publicly about Gardner’s departure. Gardner has not talked about his departure. She made her “SNL” debut in 2017 in season 43.
She was the member of the female cast with more time during season 50, according to Rolling Stone.
Gardner appeared in a variety of sketches and was known for his “weekend update” characters “Bailey Gismert”, a teenage film critic and “Angel, every girlfriend of each boxer of each movie about boxing”.
Gardner also has a flourishing race out of 30 rock, which appears in the Apple TV+ “driving” series and the films “Hustle”, “Life of the party” and “Trust Fall”.
Devon Walker
Walker announced his departure on Monday on Instagram, with the legend: “The baby and I broke.”
“For me, work in this industry feel like a lot of small marriages. Some of them last a long time if we are lucky, but most of them are fleeting,” he wrote. “The program and I did three years together, sometimes it was really great. Sometimes it was toxic like hell. But we did what we took full advantage of what it was, even in the midst of all the dysfunction.”
Michael Longfellow
Longfellow called his mandate “The best three years of my life so far.”
“He won’t return for a fourth season in SNL. I wish it was, for what is going,” he wrote Thursday on Instagram. “I feel nothing more than gratitude for the experience and everyone there. Lorne, you gave me the best work in the world and you changed my life. You even put my mother on television. Thank you do not start covering it, but thanks.”
Emil Wakim
Wakim, an outstanding player in the program, said Wednesday that “it was a flashing blow” to know that he will not return to “SNL’s” next season.
“Every time I scanned in the building, I thought how crazy it is to go to work there. It was the most scary, exciting and rewarding experience of my life and I will miss it a lot and all the brilliant people who work there who made him feel like a home,” Wakim wrote on Instagram.
“I was very lucky to bring something of myself there and say things I believed and I am excited by any chapter that comes next. This is to make more art without obligation,” he added.
Celeste Yim
Yim said goodbye to the program after five seasons as a writer, saying that the work “literally made all my dreams come true, but it was also exhausting.”
“I loved it and laughed every day and that is where I grew up,” Yim wrote on Sunday on Instagram.
Yim also pointed out that they are the “first person to be a SNL writer.”
“I always felt honest to work within the long tradition of queer writing in the program,” Yim wrote. “I feel so helpless to protect trans people in the world, but writing connects us and makes us permanent, so I will continue to do.”
Season 51 opens on October 4 at NBC.
