Michael Che Says He Still Hasn’t Met the New ‘SNL’ Cast Members From Last Season

A big-shot Saturday Night Live veteran like Michael Che doesn’t need to know the name of the latest one-and-done Zoomer whom Lorne Michaels will dump faster than a sketch where a wig is the star.

Yesterday afternoon, Saturday Night Live made headlines by announcing a whopping five new cast members for the upcoming Season 51, which is scheduled to premiere on October 4th. The addition of Veronika Slowikowska, Jeremy Culhane, Kam Patterson and Tommy Brennan followed a bleak week of SNL departures as Heidi Gardner, Devon Walker, Emil Wakim and Michael Longfellow left the show, all while Che was making cryptic Instagram post after cryptic Instagram post hinting at his own potential exit in his annual cycle of will-he-or-won’t-he attention-grabbing.

Now, as five young comedians’ dreams come true, Che is, once again, on Instagram writing weird, possibly-passive-aggressive commentary about the Saturday Night Live cast, posting an Instagram Story late last night after a fan sent him a softball question about getting excited for the newcomers in the Season 51 cast:

Hopefully, Che was just making a joke about the constant turnover of the Saturday Night Live cast rather than looking down on the SNL up-and-comers, past and present, who are fighting tooth-and-nail to get a foothold that’s big enough for them to start threatening to quit every few months for three years. But even if Che didn’t mean to belittle his young colleagues, this joke comes just days after the show fired Wakim, one of “the ones from last year,” in what Wakim called a “gut punch” in a heartfelt and funny Instagram post.

Then, earlier today, Che posted another cryptic Instagram Story with the caption, “i love new york city in september when everybody has to go back home,” which, considering the massive influx of non-native Columbia and NYU students into New York this time of year, probably has less to do with population trends in the Big Apple and more to do with SNL, where next season’s cast comes back to town right as the cut performers leave it.

In a high-pressure work environment like 30 Rockefeller Plaza, it’s an immense privilege for a 12-year veteran like Che to complain to his Instagram followers, or to Howard Stern, or to audiences at his stand-up shows that he’s getting tired of the gig and wants to leave SNL, only to return to the Weekend Update desk every season without fail. 

Hopefully, one of this year’s crop of new cast members whose names Che may never bother to learn will, one day, find enough success on the show to post like a pre-teen emo kid from a rich family while their colleagues post their farewells.