The 'Saturday Night Live' Season 1 Cast: Where Are They Now?

It’s a veritable who’s who of comedy giants: Gilda Radner. John Belushi. Dan Aykroyd. Jane Curtin. Then known as the “Not Ready for Prime Time Players,” the original cast of Saturday Night Live not only helped to usher in one of the longest-running and most impactful franchises in television history on Oct. 11, 1975, but also launched several of those preternaturally funny players into Hollywood super-stardom.

The late-night show’s historic 50th season premieres on NBC on Saturday, Sept. 28 with yet another edition of satirical commentary, silly Weekend Update segments and sure-to-go-viral digital shorts. Saturday Night, a movie version of the events leading up to the show's premiere also hits theaters in the coming weeks.

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So with all the hullabaloo surrounding SNL, let’s take it back to the beginnings of Saturday Night Live and catch up with that pioneering Season 1 cast and where their post-SNL careers took them.

The original cast of Saturday Night Live then and now

Dan Aykroyd

The Canadian actor-comedian was an Emmy-winning writer and performer on the NBC sketch comedy series from its beginning in 1975 until his exit in ’79, though he’s made more than a dozen guest appearances on Saturday Night Live since then. His post-SNL career saw Aykroyd reprise several famous sketch characters on the big screen, including in The Blues Brothers and Coneheads.

Over the decades, he also starred in comedy classics like Trading Places, The Great Outdoors and the Ghostbusters film franchise, most recently appearing as Dr. Raymond Stantz in 2024’s Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. Aykroyd also has had supporting roles in acclaimed dramas like My Girl, Chaplin and Driving Miss Daisy, the latter for which he was nominated for an Academy Award.

Nowadays, you can catch the comedy icon hosting The Unbelievable With Dan Aykroyd on the History Channel as well as the Fox Nation docuseries A History of the World in Six Glasses alongside his fellow SNL alums Jim Belushi, Jon Lovitz and Kevin Nealon.

John Belushi

Sadly, John Belushi’s comedy star shone bright but went out all too soon: at age 33, the comedian died of a drug overdose in 1982 at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles.

By then, Belushi had departed Saturday Night Live. He left in 1979 alongside his close friend and frequent collaborator Dan Aykyrod and became one of American comedy’s most iconic figures. He appeared in several big-name comedies including National Lampoon's Animal House, 1941, The Blues Brothers and Neighbors, and was rightfully lauded for his livewire comic genius. The performer was posthumously inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2004.

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Chevy Chase

The square-jawed breakout of that O.G. SNL cast, former Weekend Update reporter Chevy Chase has had quite a successful comedy career since departing Saturday Night Live early in its second season. The actor led some of the biggest comedies of the late 1970s and 1980s, including Foul Play—for which he earned a Golden Globe nomination—the Caddyshack series, the Fletch films and the National Lampoon's Vacation franchise, most recently reprising his role of Clark Griswold in 2015’s Vacation.

After years of guest spots, Chase notably made his grand return to television as moist-towelette tycoon Pierce Hawthorne on the NBC sitcom Community, serving as a main cast member in the show’s first four seasons. However, his character was killed off in Season 5 due to frequent disagreements between Chase and the show’s creator Dan Harmon; the actor is also unlikely to return for the upcoming Community film adaptation.

Jane Curtin

The so-called “Queen of Deadpan” was a main cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1975 to 1980, memorably manning the Weekend Update desk as anchor and regularly serving as the straight-woman foil to rowdier characters played by John Belushi and Gilda Radner. But the performer is happily still acting on both stage and screen to this day.

Following her SNL tenure, Curtin starred on the 1980s CBS sitcom Kate & Allie, for which she won back-to-back Emmys for Best Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for playing single mother Allie Lowell. She also starred in TV series such as Working It Out, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Crumbs and United We Fall, and has appeared in films like The Heat, I Love You, Man, Can You Ever Forgive Me? and, of course, Coneheads alongside her SNL buddies Dan Aykroyd and Laraine Newman. Curtin will next be seen in The Residence, an upcoming Netflix mystery drama from the Shondaland team.

Garrett Morris

The oldest member and only person of color in the original Saturday Night Live cast, Garrett Morris reportedly had issues with the typecasting he faced in sketches during his time on SNL, having appeared on the program from 1975 to 1980.

However, Morris’ decades-long comedy career thankfully offered up plenty of versatility for the performer, who had memorable roles on The Jeffersons, Martin, The Jamie Foxx Show, 2 Broke Girls and Self Made. The now-87-year-old actor-comedian is still actively working, popping up in recent episodes of Hulu’s How I Met Your Father and NBC’s Grand Crew, among others.

Laraine Newman

It looks like great humor certainly runs in the family: Laraine Newman’s daughter is actress-comedian Hannah Einbinder of Hacks fame. And you can definitely see where Hannah gets her comedy chops, with Laraine offering up hilarious character work as Connie Conehead, naive Valley girl Sherry and Christie Christina, among others, as part of the original SNL cast.

After leaving the variety show in 1980, Newman continued appearing in films in both leading and supporting roles—including Coneheads, The Flintstones and, most recently, 2016’s The Late Bloomer—as well as a voice artist in television shows, features films and video games.

Gilda Radner

One of the show’s brightest stars, Gilda Radner was the first person to be cast on Saturday Night Live. Appearing on the program until 1980, she invented such memorable characters as personal advice expert Roseanne Roseannadanna, Barbara Walters parody “Baba Wawa” and Emily Litella, a hearing-impaired elderly woman who would pop up during Weekend Update with irate opinions and ridiculous comments. For her iconic work, she received an Emmy Award in 1977.

In the late ’70s, she also found acclaim on stage, appearing on Broadway in her successful one-woman show, Gilda Radner – Live from New York. In the 1980s, Radner made several films with actor Gene Wilder, who she would famously go on to marry, including 1982’s Hanky Panky, 1984’s The Woman in Red and 1986’s Haunted Honeymoon.

In October 1986, the famed comedienne was diagnosed with stage IV ovarian cancer and underwent surgery and chemotherapy treatment, a journey that she relayed in her memoir It's Always Something. After a brief period of remission, Radner discovered that the cancer had returned in 1988. She died on May 20, 1989, and posthumously received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003.

Per Bill Murray, Radner was able to spend time with her original Saturday Night Live castmates at Laraine Newman’s 36th birthday party in Los Angeles in March 1988 before she died. Legend has it that Murray and Dan Aykroyd physically carried Radner around the shindig so that she could say goodbye to everyone, with Gilda cracking up with every step.

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