A Guide to Saturday Night Live’s Five Newest Cast Members

Live from Studio 8H… it’s five new Saturday Night Live cast members. On Tuesday, NBC announced that it’s adding Tommy Brennan, Jeremy Culhane, Ben Marshall, Kam Patterson and Veronika Slowikowska to the cast of the long-running sketch series.

After SNL‘s 50th season—which included two major televised specials in the SNL50: The Homecoming Concert and SNL 50: The Anniversary Celebration—rumors swirled that Michaels was looking to reshape the cast in a major way. Last week, a raft of departures were announced: Emil Wakim leaves the series after a single season. Devon Walker and Michael Longfellow have both departed after three years with the program. Most surprisingly of all—unless you’ve been paying attention—longtime cast member Heidi Gardner announced she’d be leaving Saturday Night Live after eight seasons as one of the show’s most visible faces.

With room on the roster, Michaels has made good on his promise to shake things up, hiring five rising comedians to join the cast as featured players. But who made the cut, and why does one of them look so familiar? Here’s a breakdown of SNL’s newest cast members.

Ben Marshall

Marshall may be technically new to the show’s cast, but he isn’t new to Saturday Night Live. In 2021, he boarded the show as part of the comedy troupe “Please Don’t Destroy,” along with his partners Martin Herlihy and John Higgins. Together, the trio made digital shorts for SNL, a la “The Lonely Island” from the early aughts; several of those videos, including “Roast” with Dakota Johnson, went viral.

Now Marshall is getting bumped up to featured player, while Herlihy—whose father, Tim Herlihy, wrote for SNL and is a frequent Adam Sandler collaborator—is reportedly sticking around as a writer for season 51. Higgins, whose father Steve Higgins is a longtime writer and producer on SNL as well as the announcer for The Tonight Show, is leaving the show to pursue other acting projects. So this year, Marshall will be on his own on Saturday Night Live for the first time—but he’s got 4 years of SNL experience under his belt. Standing well over six feet and with bright red hair, he’ll certainly stand out.

Veronika Skolikowska

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Those who love to scroll may be familiar with SNL‘s only new female cast hire, Veronika Slowikowska. Slowikoska already has a healthy online following for her viral, often absurdist sketch comedy content, with over 649k followers on TikTok and 900k followers on Instagram. (Since the SNL announcement, that number has grown to 1 million). Beyond social media, Slowikowska has starred in What We Do in the Shadows and the second season of Netflix’s Tires as the love interest to SNL-reject turned two-time host Shane Gillis.

A sketch comic with a decidedly Gen Z sensibility, Slowikowska’s background makes her similar to TikTok star Jane Wickline, who joined the cast last year. But don’t let her online presence fool you: Slowikowska is a talented comedian who regularly performs live solo shows in New York at venues like the Gramercy Theater and Joe’s Pub. She’s also got a great singing voice, so don’t be surprised if you see her breaking out the musical comedy chops, a la past cast members like Cecily Strong and Chloe Troast.

Tommy Brennan

A standup comedian from St. Paul, Minnesota, Brennan got his start in Chicago and was chosen to participate in Just For Laughs New Faces of Comedy festival in Montreal in 2023. A recent New York transplant, he’s opened for Nikki Glaser, Taylor Tomlinson, and the late Louie Anderson, and regularly performs at the Comedy Cellar. This past year, he made his late night debut performing standup on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon with a set about growing up as one of eight children (with six sisters!). Outside of standup, Brennan starred starred in the viral webseries Roommates in Law, which he created with Tim Smith. He comes to SNL with over 100k followers on Instagram and a love of statement jackets.

Kam Patterson

Patterson is also a standup who joins Saturday Night Live with a large online following, having amassed 596k followers on on Instagram and 418k on TikTok. The 26-year-old Orlando, Florida native first made waves in the comedy community as a guest on manosphere comedian Tony Hinchcliffe‘s podcast Kill Tony, where he’s now a regular. Patterson will appear in the upcoming Netflix comedy film 72 Hours starring Kevin Hart, alongside his new SNL castmates Ben Marshall and Marcello Hernández. Patterson is an expert at crowd work and regularly tours the country performing his standup, which covers everything from working the cash register to his thoughts about pickleball.

Jeremy Culhane

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Culhane is from Altadena, California, and joins SNL with the smallest social media imprint of any new cast member, having a little over 28k followers on Instagram. He regularly makes sketch videos for the comedy streaming platform DropoutTV, formerly known as CollegeHumor, and often appears on its series Game Changer. Culhane has made multiple viral TikTok and Instagram videos and performs live at UCB in Los Angeles. His viral solo comedy videos often involve a plethora of selfies in quick, comedic succession. He recently got into running.

Unless there are any other departures, he and the other four newbies will join season Saturday Night Live vets Hernandez, Michael Che, Mikey Day, Andrew Dismukes, Chloe Fineman, James Austin Johnson, Colin Jost, Ego Nwodim, Sarah Sherman, Kenan Thompson, and Emmy nominee Bowen Yang, as well as featured players Wickline and Ashley Padilla. You can see these five fresh faces for the first time when the 51st season of Saturday Night Live premieres on NBC Saturday, October 4th.