| Season Number: | 50 |
| Bgcolour: |
|
| Num Episodes: | 7 |
| Network: | NBC & Peacock |
| Last Aired: | present |
| Prev Season: | Season 49 |
| Episode List: | List of Saturday Night Live episodes |
The fiftieth season of the American sketch comedy late night television program Saturday Night Live premiered on September 28, 2024 on NBC and Peacock, with host Jean Smart and musical guest Jelly Roll.[1] In addition to the standard episodes hosted by celebrity guests and featuring musical acts, the series will also have several months of acknowledgements, leading to a three-hour celebratory 50th anniversary special retrospective, which is set to air on February 16, 2025.[2]
This season is occasionally marketed with art titling it SNL50: The Anniversary Season.
Prior to the start of the season, Punkie Johnson, who had been on the show for four seasons since 2020, and featured player Molly Kearney, who had been on the show for two seasons since 2022, decided not to return following the end of the previous season. Following Johnson and Kearney's departures, fellow featured player Chloe Troast was let go after only one season on the show.[3]
The show subsequently hired three new cast members: Ashley Padilla of The Groundlings, stand-up comic Emil Wakim, and TikTok sketch comedian Jane Wickline.
Marcello Hernandez, Michael Longfellow and Devon Walker, all of whom joined the cast in 2022, were promoted to repertory status.
In addition, SNL alums Dana Carvey, Maya Rudolph and Andy Samberg and actor/stand-up comic Jim Gaffigan, play Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Doug Emhoff and Tim Walz, respectively, in the leadup to the November 5, 2024 presidential election.[4] Carvey and Samberg, however, have continued to make brief guest appearances, with Carvey - as of the seventh episode - continuing to hold the role of portraying Biden.
Repertory players
Featured players
bold denotes "Weekend Update" anchor
Prior to the start of the season, Allie Levitan, Moss Perricone and Carl Tart joined the writing staff. In addition, writers Dan Bulla (who has written for the show since 2019) and Auguste White (who joined the writing staff back in 2022) have been promoted to writing supervisors, joining alongside current supervisors Celeste Yim and Will Stephen.[5]
Additionally, writer Rosebud Baker (who joined the writing staff back in 2022) is now named as a writer for Weekend Update.[6]
Sudi Green (who was previously a writer on the show from 2015 to 2021) returned as a writer, for the first-half of the season, to fill in for Yim, who is taking a break from the show.
In late 2021, long-time producer Lorne Michaels stated that he was committed to continuing on the series through the fiftieth season (at the time, the show was in its forty-seventh) and suggested that he may retire afterward. The subsequent year, Kenan Thompson speculated that the series may end if Michaels left, saying, "He's the one that's had his touch on the whole thing . . . It opens the opportunity for a lot of bullshit to come into the game because he's such a legend that he keeps off those corporate wolves." During season forty-nine, Michaels suggested that 2000s-era member Tina Fey could take over, but insisted that he would finish the next season before any dramatic changes. He reiterated these plans in May, when a fiftieth anniversary special was announced that would celebrate the series' history on February 16, 2025. However, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter just before the season started, Michaels denied that he would be retiring at the end of the season.[7] Prior to the season start on September 28, NBC will begin retrospectives on the show with their mid-year coverage of the 2024 Summer Olympics, and Michaels intends to bring back everyone from the previous decades as well as hosts and a variety of musical guests who have helped shape the show.
On July 31, it was announced that Maya Rudolph would return to portray vice president and presidential nominee Kamala Harris through the 2024 election season.[8] The next day, cast member Punkie Johnson announced that she would be leaving the show after four years.[9] On August 2, cast member Molly Kearney announced their departure after two seasons as a featured player.[10] On September 9, it was announced that Chloe Troast would also be departing after one season as a featured player. On the same day, it was announced that three new cast members would be hired as featured players: Ashley Padilla, Emil Wakim and Jane Wickline. Featured players Marcello Hernandez, Michael Longfellow and Devon Walker, who joined the cast along with Kearney prior to season 48, will be promoted to repertory status.[11] This season also marks Kenan Thompson's 20th season in the repertory cast, having joined during the 31st season in 2005.
Coinciding with the fiftieth season, the biographical film Saturday Night, directed by Jason Reitman, was released in theaters by Columbia Pictures on October 11, 2024, after a limited theatrical release on September 27, depicting the story of the show's tumultuous premiere on NBC.[12]
See main article: List of Saturday Night Live episodes.
Through the seventh episode, this season of Saturday Night Live was the "highest rated entertainment program across ad-supported broadcast and cable TV among viewers aged 18-49", and - with seven days of on-demand viewing included - the season so far averaged a 1.28 demo rating, and an average viewership of 7.3 million.[13]