Even Comedians Who Aren’t ‘SNL’ Cast Members Are Announcing Their Departure from the Show

With four cast departures and two writers’ room exits, the switch-up at Saturday Night Live this offseason has been pretty big compared to recent years. It has fans of the exiting staff writing outraged posts on X and creating elaborate in memoriam videos. The news has been covered by the media with a fervor comparable to election night; except instead of giving live updates on which districts are reporting, we’re in a frenzy about which Please Don’t Destroy member will be promoted to the main cast. 

It’s all a little dramatic. And what happens when people get a little dramatic? Comedians join in on the fun, either because they’re mocking us or love to be in on the joke. My two cents: I think this year there’s been way more cultural conversation around the employment changes at SNL by the general public, and it’s probably confusing and irritating the joke-making class. 

This is how we end up with Chelsea Peretti posting the following on Instagram:

The image is titled “Chelsea Peretti to Exit SNL and ‘Wasn’t Even a Cast Member,’” with the caption, “This is crazy!!!!!!!!” Peretti has her comments turned off, so we can’t get a vibe check on how everyone else is feeling, but based on those publicly available likes, we can see that Devon Walker and Quinta Brunson both liked the post. 

Another person to dive in, with basically the same exact joke, was Meg Stalter:

“So many people leaving SNL I literally just dang am I next and I forgot for a second I am not on the show I totally forgot,” she wrote over a selfie set to music. “Not kidding, literally forgot,” Stalter wrote as the caption. In the comments she followed up, “I was like okay whatever happens, wait what.”

I will say, the same joke being made twice — with one in the Older Millennial style of a meme and the other in a Gen Z style meme — indicates that we’ve reached peak saturation on the news about SNL cast departures and the reactions to said changes. But don’t blame the axed cast or the brunette comics for this; focus your irritation on the real target: Lorne Michaels. 

We’re all still talking about this because Michaels didn’t do the only proper way to announce major cast announcements, as we all learned from the hit TV show Glee. You post one list, ONE list, and it has all the names of who’s in, and by process of elimination, who’s out. None of this nail-biting nonsense. Just one big Band-Aid rip off! Everyone could address their departure on their own time, but we wouldn’t get television staffing updates in a process that’s now taking longer than the NFL draft.