Although we are sad to see the exit of Saturday Night Live favorite Beck Bennett, who has gained notoriety for his impressions of Russian President Vladimir Putin and former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, we are happy to see the return of many others who hinted they may be ready to depart, like Kate McKinnon, Pete Davidson, and Cecily Strong.
Even more, we look forward to seeing a lot more of Bowen Yang in the upcoming 47th season. He has been promoted from feature player to full-time regular cast member.
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Joining SNL in 2019, Yang quickly became a fan favorite and became the first featured player in the show’s history to be nominated for an Emmy. One of his breakout roles was playing the sassy iceberg that sank the Titanic on Weekend Update.
“First of all, you came to where I live and you hit me!” Yang said in the sketch. “It was midnight, I was chilling. Then I hear this Irish cacophony behind me. And before I turn around, and go like, ‘what?’ half my ass is gone! Which was my best feature. And I’m literally injured and all anyone cares about is 40 or 50 people died or whatever.”
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In decades past, SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels insisted that cast members make the program their primary focus, but those rules have begun to change. Yang stars in a new six-part Audible series called Hot White Heist that came out this summer, which follows a group of queer criminals as they attempt to steal the government’s supply of sperm.
The series features an all queer cast including Cynthia Nixon, Margaret Cho, Abbi Jacobson, Jane Lynch, Bianca Del Rio, Mj Rodriguez, Stephanie Beatriz, John Cameron Mitchell, and Cheyenne Jackson.
In addition to Bennett, featured played Lauren Holt will also not be returning, but the show has added three new cast members – Aristotle Athari, James Austin Johnson, and Sarah Sherman (also known as Sarah Squirm).
The new season of SNL kicks off October 2 with Owen Wilson hosting and country music star Kacey Musgraves as the musical guest.
It’s nice to have a gay man in the cast 🙂 Here’s to adding a couple more to the cast as well!