Posted in: NBC, Peacock, TV | Tagged: saturday night live, snl

SNL Welcomes 7 New Writers Ahead of This Weekend's Season 51 Return

Writers Jack Bensinger, Jo Sunday, Maddie Wiener, Rachel Pegram, Claire McFadden, Maxwell Gay & Tucker Flodman join SNL ahead of Season 51.

With only days to go until NBC's Saturday Night Live kicks open the doors on Season 51 with host Bad Bunny and musical guest Doja Cat, we're getting the lowdown on the new writers joining the SNL team. Variety is reporting exclusively that seven new writers have joined the long-running late-night sketch comedy series: actor-writer Jack Bensinger (Rap World), stand-up comedian Jo Sunday (Just for Laughs), comic Maddie Wiener (The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon), actor and writer Rachel Pegram (Harley Quinn), writer-comedian Claire McFadden (Second City), Maxwell Gay (The Harvard Lampoon), and Tucker Flodman (The Harvard Lampoon). After this weekend, Oct. 11th sees SNL icon Amy Poehler and musical guest Role Model, with Oct. 18th bringing Sabrina Carpenter pulling double duty as both the host and the musical guest.

During the 77th Emmy Awards red carpet, SNL EP Lorne Michaels spoke with Entertainment Tonight's Nischelle Turner about the recent changes. "The show has always brought people in from different ages and different generations, and it's how it revives itself," Michaels explained. "It's always hard when people leave, but there's a time for that, and our audience has always stayed relatively young, and more so now with TikTok," Michaels added, pointing to how SNL has had a long tradition of cast changes, and that while it can be painful, it's also one of the main reasons why the long-running late-night sketch comedy series has lasted as long as it has. "Change is good. The people we're bringing in, I'm really excited about." You can check out the exchange in the video above, where Michaels also discusses what it was like working on SNL50 for two years.

NBC's SNL Season 51 cast includes Michael Che, Mikey Day, Andrew Dismukes, Chloe Fineman, Marcello Hernandez, James Austin Johnson, Colin Jost, Sarah Sherman, Kenan Thompson, and Bowen Yang, along with current featured players Ashley Padilla and Jane Wickline. Joining them are newcomers Ben Marshall, Tommy Brennan, Jeremy Culhane, Kam Patterson, and Veronika Slowikowska.

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