These Two Key ‘SNL’ Writers Are Allegedly Not Returning for Season 51
On Friday, Saturday Night Live executive producer Lorne Michaels teased that the show’s annual off-season staff shake-up would be “announced in a week or so,” but two of the show’s top writing talents apparently decided to beat him to the punch.
Given the show’s notorious turnover, the time in between Saturday Night Live seasons is an especially stressful period for its superfans as speculation over who will get a promotion, who will get fired and who will leave the show on their own accord typically starts before the soon-to-be transformed cast takes their final bows in the prior season’s finale. The additions and subtractions of the Saturday Night Live cast are a constant source of stress and gossip for the show’s religious following, but equally important to the on-screen talent in the ever-changing SNL ecosystem is the turnover and retention in the show’s writers’ room, where 50 different groups of occasionally coked-out nerds have slammed their heads into the walls until 2 a.m. trying to find the best catchphrase for Chris Farley's new character.
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Late last night, SNL writer and Bowen Yang's regular creative partner Celeste Yim announced their departure from the show after serving on the staff for five seasons, writing of their historic tenure in a heartfelt message to SNL fans and former coworkers, “I hate when other people say this but it’s true that I was the first ever out trans person to be a writer for SNL. … Many don’t know this but Chevy is non-binary!”
The departure of Yim further fueled rumors that their consistent collaborator Yang may also be on his way out of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, but Yim's announcement wasn't the only blow that the SNL writing staff took over the weekend — at least, not according to many online SNL fans. In a Reddit thread about Yim’s departure, many fans claimed that they had attended SNL veteran and comedy writing giant Rosebud Baker’s stand-up show at the The Punch Line in San Francisco this past weekend, where the Weekend Update writer purportedly made her own abrupt announcement.
“I saw Rosebud Baker do stand up this weekend. She said she’s not returning, too,” one fan reported. “She had a q & a at the end and someone asked her about SNL. She said she will no longer be working there.”
Another attendee of Baker's show confirmed that Baker said she was on her way out, and they expressed some concern about the accomplished writer and comedian's mental health. “She was not in a good place. Hope she is able to pull herself out of the funk,” they wrote.
However, Baker hasn't made any mention of a possible SNL exit on her social media accounts, so, for all we know, Baker still hasn't put in her two weeks and may very well return to the show when SNL returns on October 4th. And, as Larry David so famously demonstrated, even SNL writers who quit the show in front of the entire staff can still walk back their exit, so long as their key card still works on Monday morning.
