‘SNL’ Adds Four Featured Players: Marcello Hernandez, Molly Kearney, Michael Longfellow & Devon Walker

Saturday Night Live has found its four new featured players. The long-running NBC show said Thursday that it has added Marcello Hernandez, Molly Kearney, Michael Longfellow and Devon Walker to its cast.

It comes after creator Lorne Michaels revealed at the Emmys that there would be new cast members joining for Season 48.

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Kearney has appeared on Amazon’s A League of Their Own; Hernandez has opened for the likes of Tim Dillon and Gilbert Gottfried and appeared on Telemundo’s Acceso Total; Longfellow appeared on NBC’s Bring the Funny, hosted by SNL’s Kenan Thompson; and Walker has appeared on Comedy Central and writes for Big Mouth and Phoebe Robinson’s Everything’s Trash.

“This will be transition year,” Michaels said backstage at the Emmys, where SNL won the award for Outstanding Variety Sketch Series. “Change years are always difficult but always exciting. There are new people. There are four new people, at least for now.”

It comes after Deadline revealed back in May that Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant and Kyle Mooney were leaving the show at the end of Season 47 along with Pete Davidson. It later emerged that Alex Moffat, Melissa Villase?or and Aristotle Athari would not be returning either.

SNL returns on October 1 with three consecutive shows.

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Michaels added that the pandemic kept the large cast together longer than perhaps expected.

“The pandemic sort of interfered with the national order of things. I think there was a bonding; people got very close,” he added. “When we did those at-home shows, you got to see everyone’s apartment where and how they lived. There was an intimacy and connection between audience and group. I couldn’t imagine we could work without that whole team so we kept going.”

Saturday Night Live is produced in association with Broadway Video.

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