Tommy Brennan Tapped to Beef Up Lorne Michaels ‘SNL’ Sausage Fest

Lorne Michaels has q-white the vision for Season 51 of Saturday Night Live. After a historic 50th anniversary season, the departure of four cast members — Devon Walker, Emil Wakim, Heidi Gardner and Michael Longfellow — set the internet ablaze with accusations that Michaels had something against hot people. The new casting shows that maybe he doesn’t have any strong opinions about whether or not his cast is hot, but he does really want a white male majority.

The new cast announcements revealed that Veronika Slowikowska, Kam Patterson, Ben Marshall, Jeremy Culhane and Tommy Brennan are all joining the show in October. Brennan is one of the three white men joining the cast out of these five additions. There are some defining features of the comedian though, apart from his position as one of the majority. He doesn’t have as big of an Instagram following as Slowikowska, with just over 100,000 followers compared to her one million. But he is a touring comic who has appeared on Jimmy Fallon. His set on Fallon was pretty funny, too, centering on his lack of health insurance even though his father is a doctor. 

With the constant donning of a 1990s windbreaker and eyes so blue they look like the color of hyperlinks in Google Docs, Brennan has features that might make up for at least a little bit of Longfellow, Wakim and Walker’s youthful absence. It’s this same appearance, boyish charm and going by the name “Tommy” as an adult that makes me think of a child I used to babysit. The child had the same eager to please expression on his face and would always say “laugh” after he told a joke. He was eight years old, so the jokes never made much sense. Either way, I dutifully did as I was told and laughed at the nonsense. 

It’s unfair that this is what I think of when I look at Brennan, but it is. It also doesn’t help that Brennan’s TikTok handle is @SomeKidTommy, further driving home the impression I have that this man is the real-life Josh Baskins from Big. Hey Tommy! Blink three times if you’re a 13-year-old trapped in the body of a mid-20s (mid-30s?) adult man. 

Michaels was obviously looking to cast young people on the show in order to draw younger viewers in; though Brennan doesn’t come with an online following like Slowikowska or Patterson, he has been given a few accolades in the comedy world. For instance, he’s been named as a “New Face” at the Just for Laughs Comedy Festival and the Comic to Watch at the New York Comedy Festival. 

My personal feelings that Brennan looks like a child I would worry about getting kidnapped at a mall aside, I do hope Brennan is excited about getting the SNL health insurance.