SNL announces 5 new cast members, including one from ‘Please Don’t Destroy’
Saturday Night Live has announced a slate of incoming cast members, just weeks away from the premiere of its 51st season.
The late-night institution is welcoming five new performers, many of whom will be familiar to comedy fans and, in one case, SNL viewers specifically.
Ben Marshall, who has spent several years writing and performing on the show as part of its digital short-making trio, “Please Don’t Destroy,” has been promoted to a featured player. He joins the cast alongside Tommy Brennan, Jeremy Culhane, Kam Patterson and Veronika Slowikowska.
SNL heralded their arrival on Tuesday following a week in which several cast members and writers announced their departures.
Performers Michael Longfellow, Devon Walker and Emil Wakim confirmed their exits, while Variety and other outlets reported that Heidi Gardner — the longest-running female member of the most recent cast — will not be returning. Gardner has not commented publicly.
SNL creator and producer Lorne Michaels, who has the final say over hiring and firing decisions, had teased a post-50th anniversary shakeup in an interview with Puck last month. NBC Universal said Tuesday it was still too early to confirm the full lineup for the new season, which begins Oct. 4.
In the meantime, here’s what to know about the newest confirmed cast members.
Ben Marshall
Ben Marshall joined SNL’s writing staff in 2021 alongside John Higgins and Martin Herlihy as Please Don’t Destroy, the trio they formed as New York University students in 2017.
Following in the footsteps of “The Lonely Island,” the group made digital shorts and music videos skewering a wide range of topics, from hard seltzer to “hangxiety.” They collaborated with Pete Davidson and Taylor Swift for the immediately viral “Three Sad Virgins” song and traded insults with the famously dry Dakota Johnson before calling a “nepo baby truce” (Herlihy is the son of former SNL writer Tim Herlihy, and Higgins is the son of longtime SNL writer and producer Steve Higgins).
But SNL’s Please Don’t Destroy era appears to have come to an end, with Marshall joining the cast and Higgins announcing Tuesday that he is leaving to pursue acting opportunities. Herlihy will stay on as a writer, Variety reports.
Marshall paid tribute to the trio on Tuesday with an Instagram post of pictures of them over the years, writing, “I couldn’t be more grateful to have gotten into this business with my two best friends.”
“Getting to write for SNL together and make our own videos for the show was beyond our wildest dreams- and I’m so proud of everything we’ve made so far,” Marshall added. “This is a new chapter, but we’re not going to stop working together anytime soon.”
Outside of SNL, Please Don’t Destroy wrote and starred in the 2023 movie Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain and has also taken its sketch comedy on several live tours, including one wrapping up this month.
Tommy Brennan
Brennan is a regular at New York City’s Comedy Cellar who has opened for acts including Nikki Glaser and Taylor Tomlinson, according to his website.
He was selected as a “New Face” at the 2023 Just For Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal, and did stand-up on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon earlier this year, with autobiographical material about growing up with six sisters and not having health insurance while his dad is a doctor.
Brennan has built a following online, including through Roommates-In-Law, the web series and podcast he created with comic Tim Smith. The Minnesota native announced his new gig on Instagram, writing: “This doesn’t feel real, but we’ll see you guys on Saturdays!”
Jeremy Culhane
Culhane is a California-born actor and writer who is known in part for his viral TikTok videos. He performs on Dropout TV, a comedy subscription streaming service, as well as with the improv and sketch comedy group Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) in Los Angeles.
Culhane has appeared in several TV series, including HBO Max’s The Sex Lives of College Girls and the Netflix mockumentary American Vandal. He also co-hosts a podcast called Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists, which describes itself as an “improvised Hollywood roundtable podcast featuring raw, honest and very pretentious conversations between the film industry’s most unhinged personalities.”
Culhane shared the SNL announcement on Instagram, captioning it: “Holy s*** I think.”
Kam Patterson
Patterson is a stand-up comedian from Orlando, Fla., who appears regularly on the comedy podcast Kill Tony, where he has gained a reputation for his crowd-work. He has also been cast in 72 Hours, a yet-unreleased Netflix bachelor-party comedy starring Kevin Hart alongside an ensemble cast including Patterson’s future SNL castmates, Ben Marshall and Marcello Hernández.
Kill Tony is recorded live in front of an audience at the Comedy Mothership in Austin, Texas, a venue created by controversial podcaster Joe Rogan.
The podcast is hosted by comedians Brian Redban and Tony Hinchcliffe, whose disparaging jokes — including one calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” — at an October 2024 rally for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump drew widespread criticism. Patterson defended Hinchliffe onstage in the wake of the incident, referring to him as “my f*****g brother.”
Referencing Kill Tony‘s weekly tapings, Patterson wrote on Instagram: “Monday nights changed my life … let’s see how i do on Saturdays.”
Veronika Slowikowska
Slowikowska is an actress and comedian with a wide-ranging resume. The daughter of Polish immigrants, she grew up in Ontario, Canada — continuing SNL’s long tradition of Canadian talent, starting with Toronto-born Lorne Michaels.
Slowikowska began her career with My Chemical Bromance, a Toronto musical comedy troupe she founded with her two best friends.
She played the recurring character Shanice in the FX comedy horror mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows, as well as one of the leads in the 2024 science fiction teen comedy series Davey & Jonesie’s Locker.
She also plays the character Kelly in the Netflix series Tires. The show was created by and stars Shane Gillis — who, incidentally, was fired from SNL just days after his hiring was announced in 2019, after a clip of him using a racial slur on a podcast resurfaced.
Slowikowska may be most recognizable for her viral, often physical sketch comedy content on TikTok and Instagram, where she has 1 million followers. Striking a more serious tone in her latest post, she called SNL a “dream come true.”
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