Did Lorne Michaels Even Try to Get More Women of Color on the Cast of ‘SNL’?

Earlier this year, before the new cast was announced and the SNL departures began, a rumor circulated that Saturday Night Live was looking to cast more women of color. It ran alongside ones that Michael Longfellow would be screen-testing for Weekend Update. Looking at the cast for Season 51, it’s clear that the rumored information has all turned out to be aggressively untrue. 

Not only did Longfellow leave the show, but reporting confirmed that both Michael Che and Colin Jost would be returning to the Weekend Update desk. On top of that, when the five new cast members were announced, only one — Veronika Slowikoska — was a woman. And there are zero women of color among the additions. 

With the exit of Ego Nwodim, who announced she would be leaving the show on Friday, SNL has now lost two women from the cast. Heidi Gardner was part of the “big shakeup” that included Emil Wakim, Devin Walker and Michael Longfellow. Their exits were controversial, but Nwodim’s was surprising as she announced her departure after the round of hirings and departures were completed. It also means that for the first time since 2014, there are no Black women in the cast. 

While this doesn’t mean that there isn’t diversity at Studio 8H, the departures of Nwodim, Walker, Wakim and Gardner do reveal a decidedly more white, more male cast. That said, in an interview from Nwodim earlier this year, she told Glamour that what we’re seeing on screen isn’t fully reflective of the entire staff.

“I wish people realized the writers’ room is pretty diverse,” Nwodim said. “It could stand to be more — it can always stand to be more reflective of the world — but it’s pretty diverse. I wish people knew that people were writing from their own perspective in that writers’ room. It’s not just one white guy that went to Harvard. I just need to say that. I really need to get that off my chest."

Still, it’s hard not to think about the rumors from earlier this summer and compare them to the reality we’re looking at now. With Nwodim out, the returning women are just Chloe Fineman, Ashley Padilla, Sarah Sherman and Jane Wickline.

Back in 2014, Sasheer Zamata was hired mid-season after no Black women had been in the cast since Maya Rudolph left the show in 2007. At the time, Michaels claimed it wasn’t due to public pressure, but it can’t be ignored that there had been ample criticism of the show’s glaring lack of Black women. Zamata was on the show from 2014 through 2017. As BlackGirlNerds pointed out, there’s been a repeated problem on the show throughout the years casting Black women. According to Variety, SNL has only had eight Black women on cast in the last 50 years. 

In 2024, Keenan Thompson praised the show for its diversity — not just for the sake of diversity itself but toward the mission of better comedy. “For decades, SNL had only one, maybe two Black cast members,” Thompson told Deadline. “Today, I’m one of five, and we also have Asian, Hispanic, LGBTQ+ members in our cast. It’s just not about appearances, it allows the show to do comedy it never could before.”

What comedy will the Season 51 cast be able to do? What might be off the table now?