As NBC's Saturday Night Live returns to in-studio filming, the long-running sketch show has announced three new cast members and the first guest star for the 2020-2021 season. Comedy legend Jim Carrey will return to the airwaves and will take over portraying Presidential candidate Joe Biden, a role previously played by Jason Sudeikis and Woody Harrelson.
In talking about the show's triumphant return as well as its very special guests, SNL boss Lorne Michaels told Vulture the following:
“You’ll see the same people. I mean, Maya Rudolph is coming back, and Alec [Baldwin] will be back. And Jim Carrey is going to do Biden,” explained Michaels, who then went on to reveal that this all started with Carrey expressing interest in the part. “It came down to discussions of what his take was … He will give the part energy and strength, and [Laughs] hopefully it’s funny.”
Joining the SNL cast for its upcoming season are Lauren Holt, an actor, comedian, singer, and improviser, who was a house performer at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater in Los Angeles, Punkie Johnson, a comedian and writer who has written for shows like Space Force and Corporate, and Andrew Dismukes, who has been a writer at SNL since the variety show's 43rd season.
When the show returns to its 8H Studio on October 3, it will so with a limited audience so as to mitigate the risk of infection during the ongoing pandemic.
“We need the audience, obviously. With comedy, when you don’t hear the response, it’s just different. With the kind of comedy we do, which quite often is broad, timing gets thrown off without an audience. And for me, what is most important is when you’re absolutely certain of some piece on Wednesday, and then the dress-rehearsal audience sees it on Saturday and tells you you’re wrong. . . .I think us coming back and accomplishing the show will lead to — I hate to use the word normalcy — but it’s a thing that is part of our lives coming back, in whatever form it ends up coming back. So the physical problems of doing it — number of people who can be in the studio, number of people who can be in the control room, how you separate the band so that they’re not in any jeopardy — all of those are part of the meetings we’ve been having,” said Michaels.
Earlier this week, the full cast list for Saturday Night Live Season 45 was revealed. The upcoming season will feature the following players: Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, Cecily Strong, and Kenan Thompson, with Beck Bennett, Aidy Bryant, Michael Che, Pete Davidson, Mikey Day, Chloe Fineman, Heidi Gardner, Colin Jost, Alex Moffat, Kyle Mooney, Chris Redd, Cecily Strong, Melissa Villaseñor and Bowen Yang also being a part of the mix.
That said, not all cast members will be present for the entire season. For example, Aidy Bryant will pop in-and-out as he'll be filming Shrill, while Strong plans on contributing to a project in Vancouver. Oddly enough, SNL will green-screen Strong into key episodes. “People will stay involved, but they may not physically be in the studio,” Michaels revealed.
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