Heidi Gardner has become the latest Saturday Night Live star to announce her departure, amid a broader cast shakeup that is starting to feel more like an earthquake.
ICYMI, SNL top dog Lorne Michaels revealed last week that he intended to “shake things up” with the cast ahead of the sketch show’s 51st season, which will premiere in October.
Now, it seems those intentions are coming to fruition, with Gardner one of four castmates to have bid farewell to the show in the past three days.
Gardner had been a staple on the cast since 2017, and was known for her impressions of the likes of Kim Kardashian and Taylor Swift.
Last year, she went viral for breaking character during a skit in which host Ryan Gosling was playing Beavis from Beavis and Butt-head.
Gardner’s exit is the most surprising given her long-running tenure on SNL, but she wasn’t the only one who turned heads with her departure.
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Michael Longfellow was also axed ahead of season 51 after a three-season stint. That exit came as a surprise, since many believed Longfellow was being primed to host the show’s Weekend Update segment which anchors each episode.
Another castmate given the boot was Devon Walker, who joined in 2022 and compared his exit to a divorce in an announcement post on Instagram.
“Jobs in this industry feel like a bunch of little marriages. Some of ‘em last for a long time, but most of them are fleeting,” the comedian wrote.
“Me and the show did three years together, and sometimes it was really cool. Sometimes it was toxic as hell.. Even amidst all the dysfunction, we made a fucked up lil family,” he added.
The final castmate to leave was Emil Wakim, who only joined last year but described his stint as “the most terrifying, thrilling and rewarding experience of my life” on social media.
With a mass exodus comes an influx, and rumours are already flying as to who will replace the exiting castmates for the show’s 51st season.
One name floating around the rumour mill is TikTok skit queen Veronika Slowikowska, who fuelled speculation earlier this month after she appeared notably cagey when asked of her potential casting.
It remains to be seen how far this shakeup will go, but if Michaels had any sense, he’d ditch the entire SNL cast and just put Kristen Wiig on the stage for a weekly one-woman show.
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The post A Bunch Of SNL Stars Have Been Fired In Brutal Mass Exodus & They’re Not Going Quietly appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
