SNL’s Heidi Gardner and Michael Longfellow are among the stars leaving the show

As Saturday Night Live nears the end of its summer vacation, a slew of beloved cast members say they’ve already taken their final bows ahead of the show’s 51st season.

Performers Michael Longfellow, Devon Walker and Emil Wakim, as well as writer Celeste Yim, announced their departures on social media. Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and other outlets confirmed that Heidi Gardner is leaving the show after eight seasons.

It is customary for cast members to announce their exit when a season ends in the spring or before a new one begins in the fall. The show’s much-hyped 50th season — celebrated with a series of star-studded events, from a homecoming concert to a prime-time special — ended with plenty of fan speculation but no explicit cast announcements.

SNL creator and producer Lorne Michaels, who has the final say over hiring and firing decisions, told Puck last week that with the golden anniversary now in the rearview, it’s time to shake things up.

“I wanted people coming back and being part [of the 50th season],” he said, in his first interview since the season ended. “And that meant there couldn’t be those kind of disruptions [to the cast] or anything that was going to take the focus off the [the 50th season]. And we had an election.”

When asked if he felt pressure to reinvent the next season, Michaels responded: “Yeah, for sure.”

Other departures, as well as new hires, could be announced in the coming days and weeks. Michaels confirmed that one cast member won’t be going anywhere: James Austin Johnson will continue parodying President Trump.

SNL returns for its 51st season on Oct. 4, without these familiar faces.

Heidi Gardner 

As the longest-running female member of the current cast, Gardner was one of the show’s most recognizable stars. She joined SNL as a featured player in 2017 and was promoted to the main cast in 2019.

Gardner quickly became a fan favorite for her original, over-the-top characters on Weekend Update.

Her popular personas included cringey teenage film critic Bailey Gismert, the exasperated “Your Co-worker who is Extremely Busy Doing Seemingly Nothing” and Angel, aka “Every Boxer’s Girlfriend from Every Movie about Boxing Ever,” who was always threatening — in a deep Boston accent — to “take the kids to my sister’s.”

Gardner also stole scenes in sketches, including memorably, finally breaking character during an April 2024 “Beavis and Butt-Head” spoof.

“I had coached myself for so many years to not break,” she later told Vulture. “Being a perpetual people-pleaser rule follower, it was nice that I broke the rules — unintentionally, of course. I can’t help what I saw, but people were okay with it. Not only okay with it but encouraged it.”

Gardner has also acted outside of SNL, including in the 2022 movie Hustle and the Apple TV+ series Shrinking. NPR has reached out to NBC and Gardner’s management team for comment.

Michael Longfellow

Longfellow confirmed on Instagram that he will not be returning for a fourth season, writing, “Wish I was but, so it goes.”

“It was the best three years of my life so far,” he wrote. “I feel nothing but gratitude for the experience and everyone there.”

Longfellow thanked Michaels for giving him the job, changing his life and even putting his mom on TV.

Longfellow was promoted to the main cast at the start of the 50th season, after two years as a featured player.

He brought a memorable cast of characters to the Weekend Update desk, including an Old-Fashioned Cigarette weighing in on Australia’s proposed vape ban, Michelangelo’s David defending his controversial inclusion in a grade school curriculum and a deeply cynical Punxsutawney Phil.

Longfellow also played a role in popular sketches, including a song in which he stars as the titular “Goth Kid on Vacation,” a darkly funny scene in which he plays an EMT responding to a death at a waterpark and another in which he portrays a game show host trying to offload his 37-year-old pet tortoise as a prize.

“Then kill him, tough guy — you won’t,” Longfellow says to a contestant in the sketch, a line he referenced in his goodbye post on Thursday.

“I’ll miss it all, but I’ll miss the friends I made and seeing them everyday the most,” he added.

Devon Walker

Walker announced his departure in an Instagram post captioned “me and baby broke up.”

He compared his job to a turbulent marriage in a typed letter titled “Wait …. Did he quit or did he get fired?”

“Me and the show did three years together, and sometimes it was really cool,” he wrote. “Sometimes it was toxic as hell. But … we made the most of what it was, even amidst all of the dysfunction.”

Walker’s looks and laid-back demeanor drew comparisons to former SNL star Pete Davidson, whom he overlapped with in a brief, self-deprecating appearance as “Black Pete” in a 2023 song parody.

Walker portrayed politicians and other celebrities onscreen, including Republican Sen. Tim Scott, New York City Mayor Eric Adams and TV host Michael Strahan. He brought his own takes to Weekend Update, discussing his adjustment to life in New York City and mocking a fitness influencer’s viral morning routine videos with a comically exaggerated one of his own.

He also gently chided fans as they mourned his departure. He commented on a tweet of pictures of him with Longfellow, writing: “yall acting like we died lol we just getting different jobs.”

Emil Wakim

Wakim, who joined SNL as a featured player at the start of last season, announced his exit on Instagram, writing, “it was a gut punch of a call to get but i’m so grateful for my time there.”

Wakim made history as the first Lebanese-American SNL cast member. A stand-up comedian, and the son of a Maronite Christian Lebanese immigrant father and American mother, he brought his unique personal perspective to Weekend Update segments about things like American patriotism and voting in the 2024 election.

“I was so lucky to bring some of myself in there and say things i believed in and i’m excited for whatever chapter comes next,” he wrote on Instagram. “Here’s to making more art without compromise.”

Celeste Yim

Yim, the first out trans person to be a writer for SNL, is leaving the show after five seasons.

“Lorne hired me over the phone when I was 23 and the job literally made all of my dreams come true BUT it was also grueling and I slept in my office every week BUT my friends helped me with everything BUT I got yelled at by random famous men BUT some famous girls too BUT I loved it and I laughed every day and it’s where I grew up,” they wrote on Instagram.

Yim has said that some of their favorite early sketches include parodies of the pantyhose brand “L’eggs” and the “It Gets Better” campaign, in which gay adults complain about various idiosyncratic problems unrelated to their sexuality.

Yim ended their goodbye post by thanking a long list of people, including “every SNL assistant and production crew member who ever made any part of anything I ever wrote.”

Rosebud Baker

Baker arrived at SNL as a writer midway through Season 47, and joined its Weekend Update writing team at the start of the last season. She’s been busy outside of 30 Rock, releasing her second comedy special, The Mother Lode, on Netflix in February.

Earlier this week, as LateNighter broke the news that Baker would not be returning to SNL, she took to Instagram to announce her own national tour starting in the fall.