Here's the latest cut-for-time sketch from SNL, this time starring Kyle Mooney as New York comedian and occasional Weekend Update guest Bruce Chandling in a pretaped sketch called "Comedy Club." It's an amusing peek into Chandling's inner emotions and features appearances by Hart, Leslie Jones, Pete Davidson, Michael Che, Jay Pharoah, Dave Attell, Artie Lange, and Beck Bennett as Chandling's partner in crime Ronny Donnyonyae.
Word has come down this week that SNL cast members Noël Wells, John Milhiser, and Brooks Wheelan have been let go from the show after one season, with Nasim Pedrad also leaving to work as a regular on Mulaney (a move that has long been anticipated) and Mike O'Brien's status currently in talks. Their departures don't come as too huge a shock — as we recapped at the end of last season, the three saw little screen time and had few memorable moments during the season. And while it must come as a disappointment to those actors and their fans, let's not forget that at least a third of everyone [...]
With SNL's 39th season coming to a close, we're taking a look at the past season with a series of posts examining the highs, lows, and other memorable moments from the past eight months. Here, we look at the performers that make up SNL's current cast, including their overall contributions to the show, memorable roles, relative screen time, and prospects for returning next season.
SNL's 39th season was a crowded one. Record-breaking crowded, even. Six new hires, plus a seventh midseason, rose the total to 17, making the current cast the largest SNL has seen during its entire four-decade run, topping even the infamously bloated 1990-1991 season. That season only had [...]
We've reached the midpoint of SNL's 39th season — one that has optimistically been called a "transitional year," but one more commonly known as "the year the shit hit the fan with that whole black woman issue." Despite the fact that the bulk of the SNL coverage in fall 2013 has zeroed in on the show's diversity controversy, SNL has given us plenty of other things to talk about, from new cast members and emerging stars on the show, to surprise cameos and celebrity hosts who defied our expectations — in good and bad ways.
Unfortunately, few of those topics have gotten much ink in fall 2013 (outside of sites [...]
On Friday, we reported that SNL is hiring three members of the Los Angeles-based sketch group Good Neighbor for the 2013-14 season. Good Neighbor consists of writer/performers Kyle Mooney, Beck Bennett, and Nick Rutherford, who all met as students at USC, and Dave McCary, a childhood friend of Mooney's who's the group's director and editor. Mooney and Bennett have been hired by SNL as featured players and McCary as a video director, making this the second time the show has added multiple members of an existing video sketch group after The Lonely Island in 2005.
Founded in 2007, Good Neighbor quickly amassed millions of YouTube hits with their sketch videos [...]
SNL returns for its 40th season this Saturday, with host Chris Pratt, musical guest Ariana Grande, and pretty much the same cast — minus a handful of people we rarely saw in sketches anyway. Following a lackluster season, Lorne Michaels is now sticking with the tools he's got, replacing five departing cast members with only one newcomer — standup Pete Davidson — and promoting writer Michael Che to co-host Weekend Update. Meanwhile, Colin Jost will remain at the desk after taking on the job last February. It's a conservative approach, compared to last year's throw-everything-against-the-wall casting strategy, which resulted in a cast so overpopulated that some remained literal faces in the crowd at the season's [...]
SNL's Kyle Mooney showed up on Comedy Bang! Bang! recently as the show's intern Monty, and Aukerman made him report live from a scene of earthquake destruction while also demanding he make silly butt jokes at his own expense.
With SNL's 39th season coming to a close, we're taking a look at the past season with a series of posts examining the highs, lows, and other memorable moments from the past eight months. Here we recall some of our favorite sketches from the season — both live sketches and videos.
Season 39 of SNL certainly hasn't been the most popular among viewers, with its first half bogged down with criticism over the lack of diversity in the cast, and its second half attacked (often unfairly) for uneven writing under new head writer Colin Jost. Even though the show hired Sasheer Zamata (along with two black female writers), and the script [...]
For a show that evolves constantly, SNL does a remarkable job preserving its brand. Despite the changes in the cast, the writers, and the culture it parodies, SNL will always be that live, hip, New York-centered show that puts up a few sketches at the end of the week to try to make you laugh. There's the "Live from New York…" throw line, the theme music, Don Pardo listing off the cast, the host walking out on stage, followed by that predictable pattern of live sketches, videos, musical performances, and the news segment. Critics put down this structure in favor of looser, more inventive sketch show formats, but given SNL's [...]
Deadline is reporting that SNL has four top candidates to add to the cast as featured players for the fall. While NBC has yet to announce the news, the report says that Beck Bennett, John Milhiser, Kyle Mooney, and Noël Wells are "heavily rumored to land the coveted SNL spots." All four are performers from Los Angeles's Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre and each one has a series of popular web videos to his or her name. Milhiser is a member of the video sketch group Serious Lunch, Wells is known for her solo videos, and Mooney and Bennett both come from the sketch group Good Neighbor, which also [...]
Back in 2012, comedian Nathan Barnatt struck a deal with Adult Swim to develop a half-hour comedy based on his hit dancing/gaming character Keith Apicary called Youth Large, and recently Barnatt posted the full pilot — which the network passed on last year — to YouTube. Written by Barnatt, his brother Seth, and Paul Cummings, the pilot follows a group of lazy gamer nerds (including a pre-SNL Kyle Mooney) getting into all kinds of low-level shenanigans — or as Barnatt describes it: "We were hired to make a 'weirder' Always Sunny. So that's what we made."
Here's a new video SNL put out, in which freshman cast members Kyle Mooney and Beck Bennett discuss their favorite moments from their inaugural season: all of which are just them hugging each other and goofing around during the end credits goodbye.
In August, Saturday Night Live hired actors Kyle Mooney and Beck Bennett and director Dave McCary from the sketch group Good Neighbor, and in this weekend's Jonah Hill-hosted episode of SNL, they brought some characters from their web videos to the show. The last sketch of the night — a slot that's been reserved for Good Neighbor videos for most of the season — was called "Inside SoCal," and Mooney and Bennett have been doing their characters, Todd and Casey, for three years now. Mooney, who grew up in San Diego and is adept at precisely making fun of the dialogue and mannerisms of Southern California guys, wrote the original [...]
Season 39 of SNL kicks off this Saturday night with Tina Fey, Arcade Fire, and a mouthful of new names for Don Pardo to read off in the opening credits. After several seasons of little turnover, the cast is experiencing a major upheaval, with six — six! — new cast members to replace the departed Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis, and Fred Armisen. This is the largest staff hire in 18 years, tying the 1995-1996 season's addition of Jim Breuer, Will Ferrell, Darrell Hammond, David Koechner, Cheri Oteri, and Nancy Walls. After the show's dismal 1994-1995 season, which saw near cancellation and the firing/resignation of 12 cast members, those six were [...]
